Dear families,

It was the greatest joy in the world to see so many happy, smiling faces (and dancing feet!) at our Juneteenth celebration on Friday!  What a beautiful way to end this challenging, isolating school year.  A million thank-yous to our FORJ liaison Lanni Isenberg for bringing it all together; to our amazing emcee and host, parent Chris Worrell; to Fhynita Brinson for all her help and for organizing Juneteenth readers all week; and to all the parents who volunteered, provided supplies, and showed up to celebrate with us.

We also had a wonderful 5th grade graduation ceremony on the field on Thursday — congratulations to our amazing 5th graders and thank you to the teachers and all the families who helped set up and attended the event!

A note from the PTO:  We know this has been an especially tough year to find any extra bandwidth for school activities or volunteering, and we just want to let all of you know how enormously much we appreciate you and this community.  Whether it was coming to a PTO meeting over Zoom, donating to the Annual Fund or the clothing drive, writing welcome letters to our new families, supporting your kids with all the new schedules and technology, or expressing gratitude and love for our extraordinary teachers, every small contribution made a big difference, and we are so thankful for you.

We hope you all have a fantastic, restful, connection-filled summer, and we look forward to seeing everyone again in the fall!

Principal Morrissey & the PTO

Dear families,

The end of the year is approaching, and we hope everyone is enjoying the warm weather and the last few weeks of school!  It has been such an unusual and challenging year, and we want to again thank all the teachers, families, and students who have shown such grace, flexibility, and patience throughout.

A few important upcoming dates to note:

June 11: Crossing Guard & Bus Driver Appreciation Day (remember to bring a thank-you note for your crossing guard or bus driver!)
June 11: DLA students visit the school, 2:30-3:30pm
June 15: 5th grade parents are invited to a Bigelow Virtual Parents’ Coffee, 9-9:45am (check your emails for the invite, which was sent May 26)
June 16:  Step Up Day — a chance for our 5th graders to visit their middle school
June 17:  5th Grade Graduation, 1:30pm on the field
June 18:  No school; Juneteenth celebration/picnic on the LE playground, 4-6pm
June 22:  Last day of school!

Our grade-level playdates to bring together DLA and in-person friends also continue this week:

The last few playdates planned for this week and next are:

Tuesday, June 8th, 5-6pm:  4th grade
Thursday, June 10th, 5-6pm:  Kindergarten
Saturday, June 12th, 4-5pm:  1st grade
Sunday, June 13th, 4-5pm:  5th grade
Tuesday, June 15th, 5-6pm:  3rd grade

Hope to see you there!

Please return ALL books to your home schools on Thursday, June 10th or Friday, June 11th.  This includes guided reading and independent reading books (but does not include Wishtree — that is a gift for your family to keep!).

Thank you all for your help, and we hope you have a wonderful week!

Principal Morrissey & the PTO

Dear families,

We had a wonderful celebration around our own Lincoln-Eliot Wishtree this past Friday, where our scholars got to hang their own wishes, inspired by our One Book, One Community read, Wishtree, by Katherine Applegate.  It has been so great to hear the kids talking about this book, and we want to thank Ms. Conley again for organizing this fantastic project to bring our community together!

We are rescheduling the 3rd and 4th grade playdates that were rained out this weekend.  If the weather is better, 3rd graders please join us on the playground Monday, May 31 (tomorrow), at 4pm and 4th graders are invited on Thursday, June 3, at 4pm.

More playground playdates are coming up, in the hopes of connecting our DLA and in-person students before the end of the school year — we hope you can join your classmates for some warm-weather fun!  (Note: these playdates are for your current grade.)

The playdates planned for this week are:

Monday, May 31, 4-5pm:  3rd grade (rescheduled from Sunday)
Tuesday, June 1st, 5-6pm:  5th grade
Thursday, June 3rd, 4-5pm:  4th grade (rescheduled from Saturday)
Saturday, June 5th, 4-5pm:  Kindergarten
Sunday, June 6th, 4-5pm:  2nd grade

We wish you all a peaceful and restful long weekend; see you Tuesday!

Principal Morrissey & the PTO

Dear families,

This year, International Night will look different than it has in the past.  Since we still can’t gather all together and celebrate our many cultures, we have decided to make it a virtual International Week!  This coming week, we will be releasing three videos:

• On Tuesday, May 18th, please watch our cooking videos!  Yum!

• On Wednesday, May 19th, please enjoy some presentations about some of the cultures we represent at Lincoln-Eliot.

•  On Thursday, May 20th, please enjoy our talent show.

Links to the videos will be shared this week. Stay tuned! 

Sometime during International Week we hope you get to try one of the restaurants that are offering discounts for Lincoln-Eliot families.  Please see this flyer for details!  Enjoy!

We are so lucky to be part of such a diverse community, and we are excited to celebrate with all of you!  Happy International Week!

Principal Morrissey & the PTO

Dear families,

Don’t forget that we are working on a fundraising clothing donation drive — so if you’re spring cleaning, please save your clothes, shoes, and linens for us!  We’ll be collecting bags from NOW thru May 29th and hopefully delivering them to Savers West Roxbury on June 5th.  Please reach out to Ronda Morra: 781-589-7226 or rbmorra@gmail.com if you can volunteer to help, or if you have bags ready to be picked up!

COVID-19 Pooled Testing

Our testing participation levels are hovering around 40% in all schools.  We really need to increase participation to 70-80% for testing to be effective.

We NEED YOUR participation to make this work.  The more students who participate, the better data we have on infection rates in our community.  This means we can:

• Quickly identify infection

• Reduce the risk of in school transmission

• Limit quarantines

• Keep our schools, athletics and other important activities open for the rest of the year

Please note: Testing is now MANDATORY for all high school students participating in athletics or extracurricular activities.

Here’s how to enroll and a few details on the testing:

• Complete the opt-in in Aspen (here’s the link!)

• High school students then create an account at JCM (do it here!) for access to a QR code they use to check in their sample.  (Pre-K – 8th grade students will receive their QR code from school staff.)

• This is NOT the “touch your brain” swab!  This is a sample taken from the front of your nose with a Q-tip like swab.  It’s super-fast and painless.

• Testing is FREE to all families!

Please REMIND your students to turn in their sample when they arrive at school!

Also, MCAS testing is coming up soon.  The test dates for DLA students are different from those for in-person students; the information on DLA MCAS was in the most recent DLA newsletter, and you may have received information from your teachers about it as well.

Lincoln-Eliot MCAS 2021 Dates (for students attending in person)

Have a great week!

Principal Morrissey & the PTO

Dear families,

This week is Teacher Appreciation Week, and the PTO is working on several ways to express our gratitude for our wonderful teachers and how amazing they have been in this extraordinarily challenging year.  We hope you and your student have a chance to contribute to our thank-you Padlet (please reach out to us at president@lepto.org if you have any questions about it)!

A few parents and kids will also be outside the school at 5pm on Thursday (in masks, socially distanced!) to decorate the sidewalks with chalk in celebration of our teachers; we welcome anyone who would like to join us!  We’ll also leave the chalk out for people to add to the art on Friday, if you’d like to.

Families with incoming Kindergarten students for the 2021-2022 school year, please start the registration process through this website:  https://cas.newton.k12.ma.us/cas_NewtonMA/login.  We look forward to meeting our newest Lincoln-Eliot students!

Have a great week!

Principal Morrissey & the PTO

Dear families,

It was so great to see everyone who turned out for the Science Fair this week!  I couldn’t be more impressed with the variety of projects and the wonderful presentations by our young scientists.  It was lovely to see all your faces and all the excitement for science!

This week is our April vacation break; we hope you all get a chance to enjoy some spring weather and peaceful family time, and thank you for all your patience with the schedule changes during the last couple of weeks.

The Newton Free Library has a special program this Wednesday that kids might enjoy:

Li Liu, Acrobat–Performance and Q&A: Wednesday, April 21 at 4:30pm. Watch award winning acrobat Li Liu perform in her one-woman show celebrating the history of acrobatics in China.  Li performs amazing feats such as hand balancing, plate spinning, trick cycling and ribbon dancing.  A Q&A will follow the performance.  Online Registration is required.  A Zoom link will be sent the day before the program.  This program is made possible by the Nancy Lurensky Swidler Memorial Fund.

And the Highland Street Foundation is once again providing a week of fun free events, StoryWalks, and museum admissions throughout Boston; click here to find out more:  https://www.highlandstreet.org/programs/community-events/spring-week

Have a restful and restorative April vacation, and we’ll see you next week!

Principal Morrissey & the PTO

Dear families,

We are so excited for our Lincoln-Eliot Science Fair this Wednesday and Thursday!  Thank you so much to the amazing parents on our science fair committee for all their work on this event.  We hope everyone can join us for the activities and presentations!

Young scientists, please upload your projects before Tuesday, April 13, 2021.  Students can take a photo of their project, create a Google Doc or Google Slideshow, or make a short 2-4 minute video, and then upload it to our PADLET.  All students will get an opportunity to share their project with a Teacher & Scientist team on Thursday April 15, 2021, our Student Project Day, although presenting is not required.

Dates, times and zoom links for the science event are posted below and also here: https://lepto.org/virtual-science-fair

We are also working on a clothing donation drive fundraiser, so if you’re spring cleaning, please save your clothes, shoes and linens for us — more info on that coming next week!  (And if you’re interested in helping with this, please reach out to Ronda Morra at 781-589-7226 or rbmorra@gmail.com)

Lincoln-Eliot MCAS 2021 Dates