SAS Pudong Middle School

from Mathemagician's Mission by ksaich

Calling all MS Mathletes- it’s time to sharpen your minds and pencils. Math Matters, the Pudong MS Math Club, will meet in Mrs. Saich’s room, MS 307, Tuesdays from 3:00-4:15 starting Tuesday, Dec. 9. All Middle School students are invited to join. Students will have the opportunity to expand their problem solving and skill levels through independent and group work. We will work on MathCounts activities to prepare for our building competition during the third quarter. The top 4 students’ names are forwarded to the US State Department, Office of Overseas Schools. The four highest scoring students from all qualifying international schools will then make up the Department of State Team . Students will also compete in monthly ASMA (American Scholastic Mathematics Association) competitions. Weekly attendance is strongly encouraged.

Come support the Pudong Middle School students this Friday and Saturday!  Thanks to the amazing work done by our renowned drama teacher Ms. Danka, over 50 students from Pudong Middle School will be participating in the production of The Mouse that Roared!

Please order your tickets here:

Ticket Request Form Click Here!

Send money and the form in with your child to school this week to reserve your spot.  This is a great show for the entire family as it's a comedy that will keep you rolling in laughter.  The Pudong PTSA Middle School meeting had a sneek peak last Thursday - the kids were excited to show off their talents!

Maddie, Amanda, Kate, Roger and Jacob perform for the MS PTSA Meeting

Support our Kids!

Tags: drama

Pudong Middle School Launches SmartMusic

By Lou Davey, Pudong Middle School Band Teacher

The SAS middle school Pudong campus music department will be using SmartMusic^® to help students learn concert music and develop essential skills. We feel the SmartMusic home subscription will greatly assist student’s musical development.  Teachers will be requiring students to complete SmartMusic assignments at home.  SmartMusic is a program that motivates and engages students, builds student confidence, and enriches the student’s total music experience.

We’re confident that both parents and students will quickly appreciate how technology and SmartMusic work together to transform practicing, motivate students, and help us all prepare for great concerts!

Students never practice alone when they have SmartMusic at home. This interactive, computer-based practice system helps students get better faster, and makes practicing more fun. With amazing accompaniments for more than 30,000 titles, challenging exercises, and the ability to record personal CDs, SmartMusic is the future of music learning.

With SmartMusic loaded on a computer, students plug in an instrumental microphone and begin practicing. They play their part with accompaniment and receive immediate feedback.  In real time on their home computer, students obtain detailed feedback on their performance. It is ideal for woodwind, brass, and string musicians of all levels.

At SAS Pudong the middle school musicians increase their learning by saving their SmartMusic performances on the school’s portal.  Their formative assessments will then be linked into their blog, where the music teachers will be able to listen and assess the work by providing valuable feedback.  Students will gain tremendous strides in their musical abilities through this unique learning opportunity.

Smart Music for all musicians at Pudong Middle school is the result of the combined efforts of Hanrich Claassen, Merritt Fallis, Lou Davey and Amanda DeCardy. Please visit the SmartMusic blog at http://teachers.saschina.org/smartmusic to view the PowerPoint presentation and view videos about SmartMusic’s capabilities!

TO:                  Parents, Teachers, and Friends of Shanghai American School

FROM:            SAS Superintendent Search Committee

SUBJECT:       Superintendent Search Update

In response to the many questions we have been getting over the past few weeks, the Search Committee is providing this briefing as to the current status of our search for a new Superintendent, an exciting and critically important process that will shape the direction of the Shanghai American School for the foreseeable future.

Let’s start with a word about the process itself, which we hope to make as clear and as transparent as possible to the community.  As many of you know, the SAS Board of Directors has contracted with Search Associates, a well-respected, U.S.-based organization that over the past twenty years has successfully placed several dozen headmasters and superintendents in international schools around the world.  The founder and chief executive of Search Associates, John Magagna, is personally involved in SAS’ search for a new head, including individually screening each applicant before her/his application materials and references are presented to the Search Committee.  Following our own review of the candidates’ files, the Search Committee then informally contacts selected applicants via telephone to roughly determine their suitability for the Superintendent’s position.  The Search Committee then checks the references of each candidate we are considering (again via telephone) and utilizes direct video conferences for more formally vetting candidates that will eventually form our “short list.”  Finally, we will fly each of our short-listed candidates to Shanghai for a series of individual meetings and interviews that will guide the Board toward its ultimate decision.  It is important to realize that final meetings and interviews with each of our short-listed candidates will involve the entire SAS community, so all stakeholders will have the opportunity for input into the selection process.

The Search Committee is still in the early stages of this process.  Search Associates has forwarded us the files of several promising candidates, and we are currently engaged in the first round of telephone calls to these persons and their references, which we hope to have completed by November 15.  We will then follow up with the video conference calls and hope to have our short list of candidates by the end of the month.

Thank you for articulating your questions and voicing your concerns.  Please be assured that the Search Committee members are listening and working hard to provide the Board of Directors with the information it needs to make this vitally important decision.

Building the Better Blog

By Julie McDaid

The Middle School is blogging!  Many of the students and staff have at least one blog that they are working on, in my case I have two, and I really enjoy working on both of them on a regular basis.  Blogs are a great way to communicate and share you thoughts.  There are so many great things that you can do with a blog to make it more interesting and really produce a personalized, living document:

• Wordle:  The application on this site allows you to create a word collage, they call them “word clouds”, based on your blog.  The application and also a lot of great examples are on their website http://wordle.net/
• Jing: This site has a download the gives you the option to create screen shots.  When you download it on to your computer, it puts a little yellow dot at the top of your screen that you can use anytime you like.  You can find the download at http://www.jingproject.com/
• Voki: A “voki” is talking cartoon that you can put on your blog.  You can choose from a number of character styles, and if you have a microphone, you can give them a voice.  Vokis can be created at http://www.voki.com/
• Websites as Graph: At the site http://www.aharef.info/static/htmlgraph/ you can produce a graph of your blog.  The graph represents all of the connections and links you have made with your blog – who has seen it, responded to it or linked to it.  If you want to include you graph on your blog, you can use Jing to take a screen shot of it!

These are just a few of the really super applications that can be used.  There are many more that help you manage your blog, like “Clustr Maps” from http://www.clustermaps.com/ - that shows you where your blog visitor are from, statistic counters and blog rolls.  

Blogs are especially great for families overseas.  They give us a chance to communicate with our relatives back home.  We can share pictures, movies and words with just a few clicks of the mouse.  And parents, if you don’t already have a blog, you can sign up at www.blogger.com, for free, and create your own site that you can share.

To see our Middle School staff blogs, please visit http://teachers.saschina.org/.  Come to the PTSA meetings where technology specialists will help you learn more about how this technology can keep your connected!

Happy Blogging!

What is it about year two that makes every thing feel so much more under control and manageable?  Is it that we now know the routines, procedures and expectations or is it the calmness of familiarity that allows us to focus? Or is it finally being able to find our way from the Links to the Fabric Market without getting lost on the Nanpu Bridge?  For the students and families new to middle school, I can certainly empathize with you on the transitions.  Whether you are new to China, Shanghai, Shanghai American School, or Middle School, we hope that we have minimized the transition anxiety and that you are feeling comfortable with your decision to entrust us with your most valuable asset, your children.

Making the adjustment:

Starting my second year at SAS, I have found much comfort in the ground work we put in place last year.  Through many conversations with parents, students and staff members we have worked to tweak our program so that we can offer a highly effective academic program while maintaining our western philosophy and focus on well rounded education.

To facilitate this, our middle school has made several adjustments.  We have expanded our elective course offerings to over 60 choices for students, added a year long Art program, a full time Drama program, added additional support in our counseling department and expanded two grade levels by close to 70 students.  These programmatic expansions have been made possible through careful planning and realization of the schools mission statements. 

Additionally, as a result of these conversations we have developed appropriate communication protocols that we published to our parent community in early September.  As life long learners, we continue to evaluate our program and see areas that our community would like us to further expand.  Three areas we strive to continue to expand are our use of technology in daily instruction, our integration of content for a more formalized approach to interdisciplinary learning, and ways to maximize our students’ exposure to our host country.

Last year as I conducted daily classroom walk throughs, I was astonished by our student’s ability to recite information almost verbatim from their notes or text books.  Twenty years ago, this would have made any administrator proud of their school.  However, we no longer can ask students to recite information; rather they must be able find and process it.  We have worked with our staff to develop essential questions, areas of understanding and use of technology to alter the way our classrooms operate on a daily basis.

Furthermore, school is no longer a place where students go with open minds waiting to be filled with facts and figures. Rather school is a place for students to ask questions, find and share their answers while acquiring life long learning skills.  To achieve this, we as parents and educators must change the questions we ask students.  No longer should we as educators ask when or where, but now ask the why and how questions.  By changing what we ask, we can in fact change how students think.  To further develop our students ability to think and be life long learners, it is pivotal for our school to find ways to put technology in the hands of our teachers and students.  Through the use of technology and interdisciplinary units, students will develop connections, ownership and understanding of how to obtain and process the material which will better prepare them for the 21^st Century. 

For many of us, our lives as parents are consumed with finding ways to assure that our children have all the things in life that will make them successful.  Just prior to the October break, we shared with the Pudong Middle School community a quick list of 26 activities that the students had experienced in the first 26 days of school.  It is within these experiences that classroom learning gains meaning and context so that the desire to learn is not extinguished.  Feel certain that as a learning community, SAS is providing a well-balanced educational opportunity for your child and preparing them for the world around them. To learn more about how our program is preparing students for high school and beyond, I personally invite you all on October 23^rd to the Pudong Lecture Hall for a presentation and dialogue on learning in the middle school.  We will present examples of learning as well as provide you the opportunity to ask questions about how to support your child’s education in this changing world we live.

Ronald A. Roukema, Ed.D

Middle School Principal, Pudong

ParentTalk Issue 6 October 10, 2008

The merger of SAS ID cards with Eurest food service cards will soon simplify the daily lives of SAS students and faculty members. Between now and early-November, payment information from Eurest food service cards will be merged with SAS ID cards, thanks to the organizing work of the SAS Office of Admission and the Eurest Food Service Team.
The new ID card was rolled out last school year with the introduction of the G-School program by Yeap Transportation, SAS’s bus contractor, Director of Admission T.K. Ostrom told ParentTalk. “This amazing new ID card offers many features:  students use it for school entry, for bus transportation, and for checking-out materials in our middle and high school libraries on both campuses,” she added.
“Soon it will also give our elementary school children a sense of independency from the current system, which has the teachers handling the cards for them,” she said. All ES students will get a new Lunch/Library picture ID card separate from their ID card that is used for transportation. These new ID cards will have the word “Lunch” written on them and will distributed to each ES homeroom teacher in a SAS lanyard that will be kept in their classrooms.
“Since the Eurest scanners are easy to use and the wonderful Eurest staff and teachers will be able to assist them, so that even our youngest students will be able to handle this task with ease. Soon our ES librarian on both campuses will rollout the new ID card to check-out books same as the MS and HS school divisions.  In addition, more new features will be added with our technology capabilities in the near future.”
Here is a schedule of the steps that have been implemented for the merger of the new ID card:

Step 1: Distribution of the ID card all new students to SAS: Completed on September 12.

Step 2: Distribution of the new ES ID Lunch/Library card with an SAS lanyards: Completed by October 7.

Step 3: Merging of the ES school student's current Eurest Food Service card with their new ID Lunch/Library card: Competed by October 24.

Step 4: Merger complete and only the new ID card will be accepted: Completed on November 3.

Please Note . . .

It is very important that accurate names are used and current Eurest Food Service cards are not mixed up by students (The student's name must match the name on the new ID card);
Additional cards found at home with positive balance will be added to the new ID card anytime throughout the year, only if name of card found matches the new ID card;
Eurest will add the money from the Eurest Food Service card deposit (33 RMB) to the new ID card from school, one card per person only.
After the two weeks of card merging, there will be an additional one week period when both cards may be used; after this week, only the new ID card will be accepted on November 3, 2008

Questions? Contact T.K. Ostrom, Director of Admission (tk.ostrom@saschina.org) or Luis Jimenez, Eurest Operation Manager at SAS (eurest@saschina.org).

Students kicked off the 2008-2009 season of SAS Pudong's unique House system this morning.  Students in grade PreK4 through middle school sported their house shirts during an all school rally outside before participating in a short parade through the Shanghai Links community.  Our EAGLE mascot led the Falcons, Dolphins, Bears and Pumas with some members of the school band, homemade musical instruments and lots of cheer.  The first House points of the year were given to the mighty, mighty Falcons as they were deemed the most spirited of all the groups today!

Middle school students will be competing for House points throughout the year by participating in the House Sports program and through participation in various academic clubs.  The first House sport will be soccer and students will have the opportunity to participate or come support their house with spirit during their lunch times.  For more information about our House program, please contact Mr. Julian Thornbury at julian.thornbury@saschina.org.

Thanks to all of our middle school students and teachers for coming out on this warm day to celebrate the House of Pudong.  We compete as houses, but we are all Eagles!

EAGLE PRIDE!!!!

Tags: house, spirit

This article is cross posted with Ms. DeCardy's Blog

As a mom I crave information from my daughter’s teacher and I consciously sit down with my daughter after school to talk about the day with her.  At her age she joyfully provides me every detail, but I know that this stage will not last forever.  The fact of the matter is every parent wants to know what is going on in their child’s life when they are not in their presence, and the teachers at SAS are working hard to give you that information.

One way we are increasing our communication is through the blogging platform.  Shanghai American School owns it’s own domain name and teachers across all divisions are rapidly creating blogs as a means to communicate with their students and the parent community.  Blogs are offering teachers a way to celebrate the learning in their classroom, provide information about upcoming events, reflect on lessons taught in class, and to provide an extension to the standard classroom-learning environment.  Teachers are modeling what we are asking our students to do by acting as globally minded professionals who are empowered to seek and share information.

One of my primary goals this year is to help parents get connected and stay connected with the events going on in their child’s classrooms.  One method for parents to stay connected is to create a personal and secure Netvibes page on the internet.  When teacher blogs are updated, the Netvibes page will automatically be updated which saves parents the time of having to visit each and every teacher blog.  I will help parents set up a Netvibes page during parent coffees, PTSA meetings, open house, or even if they drop in the middle school computer lab if they happen to be at school on any given day.  I’ve also created a screencast to walk you through the steps at home on your own.

Get connected and stay connected through the SAS teacher blogs.  The information you receive will provide you with a conversation starter around the dinner table.  Especially for middle school students, the more detailed the question we ask them, the more detailed they answer!

Parents are invited to meet with Mr. John Ritter from Search Associates when he visits Shanghai American School next week.  Search Associates is assisting the board in the superintendent search.  Mr. Ritter will be gathering information directly from parents, faculty, administrators and board members in order to learn about challenges and opportunities a new superintendent might face.  We encourage parents who would like to contribute to the superintendent search at this stage to attend one of the sessions with Mr. Ritter.

Puxi Campus: Monday, May 19, 10 - 11:30 am or 1:00 - 2:30 pm. (Upstairs of big cafeteria)

Pudong Campus: Tuesday, May 20, 10 - 11:30 am or 1:00 - 2:30 pm. (HS library Garden room with couch)

If you are interested in participating in a parent session, please email Maria.Tay@saschina.org or schoolboard@saschina.org.