School News & Events
No School Monday, Sept. 6
Just a reminder that there will be no school on Monday, September 6 in honor of Labor Day. Click here to learn more about Labor Day and get resources and information for your holiday.
Back-To-School Night Is On Wed., Sept. 15
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then visiting in person must equal about a million. That's why most schools host back-to-school nights shortly after the beginning of the year. Take advantage of this opportunity to see the world your child inhabits every day and meet the people in charge. It's one of the best ways to begin to build that all-important home-school connection. We look forward to seeing you on Wednesday night, September 15.
Schedule of Events:
6:00 p.m. Book Fair opens in the Library
6:45 p.m. EXPLORE (After School) Program in the Cafeteria
7:00 p.m. Introductions & Welcoming Remarks in the Cafeteria
7:10 p.m. Go to classrooms
7:15 p.m. 1st Classroom Presentations
7:35 p.m. Passing time
7:40 p.m. 2nd Classroom Presentations
8:00 p.m. End of event
Back-To-School Night Basics
What to Expect
When: Schools usually schedule the event for a weekday evening within a month of the first day of school.
Who: You'll be able to meet your child's teachers and aides, the principal, nurse, and other staff members, and of course your fellow parents. Unless otherwise specified, this is an adults-only night, so book a sitter.
Where: The evening typically begins with an introduction in the auditorium or gymnasium. Then you'll separate into groups and spend the evening with your child's teacher/s.
What: The event gives you a glimpse of your child's daily life at school and an opportunity to learn about the curriculum. You can also sign up to join the PTA or other parent group.
Why: Research shows that parent involvement in schools helps students achieve more and schools thrive. And joining the PTO is a great way to have a voice in school issues and decisions.
Visiting the Classroom
Many teachers will have you sit in your child's seat. It makes it easier for them to keep track of which child goes with which parent — especially since a parent may not share the same last name as her child. Plus, you get the opportunity to see the world of the classroom as your child does every day.
Once you've gathered, your child's teacher will introduce herself and give an overview of students' daily routines, schedules, goals, and activities — some of this may already be written on the blackboard when you get there so the teacher can dive right into the meat of things. She will also discuss her homework policy, discipline plan, and any other important information such as if she maintains a classroom homepage and how to contact her.
The lengthiest part of the evening will be spent going over the curriculum and the methods the teacher will use to reach the year's goals.
For each subject, the teacher will outline the standards that he hopes to achieve that year and have the books he'll use available for you to review. If your child will need specific supplies for any special projects, you'll find out about that as well. The teacher will discuss how grades will be determined and may show examples of previous students' work so you can get a clear picture of what 'A' or 'S' work looks like compared to 'C' or 'U' work.
At each point, your child's teacher will likely stop and take any questions you have about the world of the classroom. Now's your chance to ask general questions and to clarify anything you find confusing. However, this is not a time to discuss your child's individual needs or progress — save that for parent/teacher conferences when the teacher knows your child better and can talk with you one-on-one.
New Superintendent Hired
My name is Paul Meyers, and I am excited to have the opportunity to serve as your school leader. I have over twenty-five years of experience in education. From 1984 to 1998, I served as a teacher and as a school counselor at Big Bear Middle School in the Bear Valley Unified School District in San Bernardino County. In 1998, I was hired by the California Department of Education as an Educational Programs Consultant in the School Counseling and Student Support Office. In 2003, I became the principal of Ferndale Elementary School.
I live in Ferndale with my wife, Melody, and our four daughters: Kayleigh (15), Kelsey (14), Ashleigh (8), and Shelby (7). I believe in educating the whole child, and in providing a nurturing and supportive environment for all students to achieve at their highest potential. I look forward to working together with you and the staff to provide the students at Pine Hill and South Bay schools an outstanding education.
Sincerely,
Paul Meyers
pmeyers@humboldt.k12.ca.us
Scholastic Book Fair Coming to South Bay
The fall book fair is a great place to get your holiday shopping done, and a wonderful way to encourage your students with their very own books. With implementation of our new Accelerated Reader program many, many more books will be Accelerated Reader (AR) books, and the book fair is will have a number of books that appeal to kids, and are inexpensive.
Our book fair will begin Monday, September 13th before school, and run during first recess, Tuesday, and Wednesday. We hope to see the whole family at the Celebrating Heroes Book Fair before Back to School night, on Wednesday, September 15th.
September Menus Now Available
The menus for school breakfast and lunches are now available online. They are in the pdf format so that anyone with a connection to the Internet can download them onto their computer can use the free program Adobe Reader® to view and/or print them.
Download the Menus: Breakfast or Lunch
If you do not have Adobe Reader on your computer, you can download it for free by clicking on the link. Download Adobe Reader
Tthe cost of student lunches to $1.75 per day. The cost for one week is $8.75. Breakfast cost will remain the same. Adult lunches are $3.50.
Accelerated Reader Resources
Here are some resources to help families help support their children in using the Accelerated Reader program.
The Parent’s Guide to Accelerated Reader
This document gives parents a complete reference to Accelerated Reader, including common questions and answers about the software. Parents will receive a comprehensive overview explaining how you can help your students become stronger readers with AR™.
A Parent’s Guide to Accelerated Reader: Questions and Answers
A Parent’s Guide to Accelerated Reader - Spanish Version
The Parent’s Guide to AR BookFinder
If parents want to help their children choose books, or if they want to help their kids learn how to choose the right books for themselves—AR BookFinder™ is the answer. With a few clicks of a mouse, parents and children can search for titles at the appropriate level, so they will find books that are both interesting and enjoyable.
A Parent’s Guide to AR BookFinder
A Parent’s Guide to AR BookFinder - Spanish Version
AR BookFinder Quick Link
Encourage parents to help their child search for appropriate books based on their child’s interests and ZPD at: http://www.arbookfind.com/default.aspx.
The Parent’s Guide to Renaissance Home Connect
Research confirms that parental involvement in a child’s education is a strong predictor of student achievement. Encourage your students’ parents to log onto Renaissance Home Connect™ to get instant updates on their student’s reading progress!
A Parent’s Guide to Renaissance Home Connect
A Parent’s Guide to Renaissance Home Connect - Spanish Version
After using AR Bookfinder to find a book that your child would like to read and then take an Accelerated Reader test on you can use the link to the Pine Hill School library computer and search to see if the book is in our collection. If not, you can use the link below to go to Humboldt County Library website to see if it in their collection.
Humboldt County Library Online Library Catalog
Click here or on the graphic below to go the Humboldt County Public Library Online Library Catalog.
Parent/Student Handbook Online
August 21, 2009
South Bay School is pleased to announce that the Parent/Student Handbook has been revised for the 2009-2010 school year and is now available on line. You can use the HANDBOOK link to the left or in the Documents pull-down menu above.
Kindergarten Alphafriends
As part of our Houghton Mifflin language arts curriculum, we use Alphafriends to help the students learn their letters. Alphafriends, a collection of characters designed to teach children about the alphabet and the sounds of the letters, come with their own songs, activities and take-home books. Each week the kindergarten students are introduced to a new Alphafriend who will teach them about a new letter of the alphabet. The students will learn the name of the letter, the shape of the letter and the sound of the letter.
We have created an entire page of resources for families to use. Click here to link to the Alphafriends resource page.
Kids' TV time linked to school woes, bad habits
By Amanda Gardner, Health.com
Click here to download a pdf of this article.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- TV watching is associated with bullying and lowered overall math achievement
- Negative effects of TV could be symptoms of broader family and household dynamics
- Another theory is that the act of watching television can harm developing brains
- The best way for young children to watch TV is with a parent
(Health.com) -- Young children who watch a lot of TV aren't just missing out on more stimulating activities. They may also be destined for problems at school and unhealthier habits later in life, new research suggests.
Each additional hour of TV that toddlers watch per week translates into poorer classroom behavior, lower math scores, less physical activity, and more snacking at age 10, according to a new study in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.
"Kids should be doing things that are intellectually enriching: playing with board games, playing with dice, playing with things that will improve their motor skills, reading," says the lead author of the study, Linda Pagani, Ph.D., a professor in the School of Psychoeducation at the University of Montreal, in Quebec. "All that is replaced by sitting on the couch."
Pagani and her colleagues followed more than 1,300 children for over seven years. Using parent surveys, the researchers measured the amount of TV the kids watched at age two-and-a-half, and again at age four-and-a-half.
Then, when the children were in fourth grade, the researchers asked the kids' schoolteachers to rate their academic performance, how well they got along with peers, and how well they listened and followed instructions. They also asked parents about the child's diet and level of physical activity.
Each additional hour spent in front of the TV per week at age two-and-a-half corresponded to a 7 percent decrease in classroom engagement, a 6 percent decrease in overall math achievement, and a 10 percent increase in being bullied by peers. (Interestingly, TV time was not associated with reading skills.)
These findings suggest that kids who watch too much TV are "learning to be just a passive receptacle," Pagani says.
TV watching also appeared to have negative effects on physical health, with each additional weekly hour resulting in a 9 percent decline in overall physical activity, a 9 percent increase in soft-drink consumption, a 10 percent increase in snacks eaten, and a 5 percent increase in body mass index.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children under the age of 2 watch no television at all, and after age 2 watch no more than one to two hours of quality programming a day. But nearly half of 1- to 2-year-olds and more than 40 percent of 2- to 3-year-olds are estimated to watch more than the recommended amount, the study notes.
How does TV harm kids?
Pagani's study is merely the latest to call attention to the drawbacks of childhood TV-watching. A number of studies have linked too much TV to a range of negative effects in kids, including shorter attention spans, slower language acquisition, increased aggression, and weight gain.
Experts have suggested several possible explanations for these findings. One theory is that time spent in front of the tube is time that could be spent on more enriching activities. As Dr. Jeffrey Brosco, M.D., a professor of clinical pediatrics at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, puts it, "Every hour that you're watching TV, you're not talking to someone, not playing a game, not building something with your blocks."
Another theory is that the act of watching television can harm developing brains. A child's brain triples in size within the first three years of life in response to external stimulation, says Dr. Dimitri Christakis, M.D., a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington and the country's foremost expert on the health effects of TV in childhood.
"Early exposure to [television] can actually be over-stimulating for the developing brain, and that can lead to shorter attention spans [and] cognitive difficulties," says Christakis, the author of "The Elephant in the Living Room: Make Television Work for Your Kids."
The rapid edits and quick sequences found in many of today's TV shows may be especially harmful in this respect, Christakis adds. "The hypothesis we have is that this conditions the mind to expect high levels of input, and by comparison, reality is boring -- it doesn't happen fast enough," he says.
Yet another possibility is that the negative effects of TV that have been reported in studies are in fact a symptom of broader family and household dynamics. In the new study, for instance, the children whose mothers were less educated and children from single-parent families tended to watch more television. Although Pagani and her colleagues controlled for these and other factors in their analysis, household habits can shape studies like this in ways that can be difficult to tease out.
"It's always possible that what you're measuring is not TV itself, but families that are more likely to let their kids watch TV versus families that don't want them to watch TV, or maternal education," says Brosco. "No one really understands what the effects of TV truly are, but so many studies--like this [one]--suggest TV is just plain bad for you."
Some TV shows are better than others
Watching television isn't necessarily harmful, however, and it doesn't have to be a mindless activity, says Christakis. He points out that Pagani and her colleagues did not ask about the specific programming that kids watched, which may weaken the findings.
"The results of this study probably in some ways misrepresent the reality," Christakis says. "Studies that we've done find that what kids watch--and how they watch--is as important as how much they watch."
Christakis believes that children should watch no more than an hour of television a day at any age. But, he says, parents should distinguish between mind-numbing cartoons and educational programs such as Sesame Street. "Parents need to know that the best-quality shows have a curriculum," he says. "They're trying to teach your child something, anything from the letter k to skills like how to share or how to handle a conflict."
According to Christakis, the best way for young children to watch TV is with a parent. This allows parents to use potentially negative content (such as violence or advertising) as a learning experience, and also provides an opportunity to engage with the children and reinforce the message of educational shows.
Copyright Health Magazine 2010
Health.com: 10 habits of healthy families
Health.com: 8 reasons to make time for family dinner
Health.com: Too much TV linked to earlier death
Health.com: Make play areas greener and safer for kids
Health.com: Is it baby fat or obesity?
Healthy Choices
New Wellness Policy Goes Into Effect
Last year South Bay Union School District adopted a Wellness Policy that is in line with state mandates. The following are the goals of this policy:
- Child Nutrition Programs, comply with federal, state and local requirements and are accessible to all children
- All foods and beverages sold on campus during the school day are consistent with current federal, state and local requirements
- The school environment is safe, comfortable and pleasing with ample time and space allocated for eating meals
- Sequential and interdisciplinary nutrition education and physical education are provided to promote student wellness
- All students are provided the opportunity to be physically active on a regular basis through physical education and physical activity programs designed to meet or exceed the California Department of Education regulations
- All school based activities are consistent with SBUSD Wellness Policy goals
Celebrations, Rewards, Marketing
The school district will encourage the use of healthly foods and/or activities for school celebrations.
- School staff and Parents will be notified of the school’s preference for healthy food or activity based celebrations
- School will inform parents of health alternatives whenever possible
Celebrations should occur after the class’s lunch period - School personnel will take opportunities to model healthy food choices while engaged in school and/or district activities
- The school district will discourage the use of food or beverages as a reward for student accomplishments nor will they withhold food or beverages as punishment
- The school will limit the marketing and advertising of unhealthy food and beverages
- Food or beverages that do not meet the nutrition guidelines stated above will not be heavily promoted.
Standards & Frameworks
Information regarding standards and frameworks designed to encourage the highest achievement of every student by defining the knowledge, concepts, and skills that students should acquire at each grade level.
Content standards were designed to encourage the highest achievement of every student, by defining the knowledge, concepts, and skills that students should acquire at each grade level.
Frameworks are blueprints for implementing the content standards adopted by the California State Board of Education and are developed by the Curriculum Development and Supplemental Materials Commission.
