Playground Pals Bus Stop

  • Foothill Elementary is pleased to announce a program called Playground Pals Bus Stop which will take place during lunch recess 3 times a week, on Monday, Tuesday and Friday. This program was implemented as a pilot program from Oct 2012 to May 2013. We are expanding and combining the program with our Expect Respect group. The idea is to expand our Playground pals to the whole day so that they can be available to help students and not limited to just recess/lunch time. 4th and 5th grade students will have the opportunity to apply and be an up stander on campus.
    The purpose of Playground Pals is to provide a wide variety of games and activities for the students to participate in with a focus on health, fitness, and positive socialization.

     
     
    The PPBS program encourages all children to participate in activities regardless of their gender, size, or ability. There are four objectives of the program:
     
     
    1. To provide a safe place for students to go if they feel alone and cannot find anyone to play with.
    2. Increase physical activity
    3. Provide a leadership opportunity for students.
    4. Decrease conflict and reduce the incidence of playground bullying

    Playground Pals Bus monitors are children from grades 4 and 5 who volunteer, and are trained to encourage a happy and positive playground experience for other kids. A parent volunteer or staff will be stationed at the bus stop along with the monitors to help facilitate their responsibilities. These students will plan and lead fun and safe activities on the playground, encourage friendships and use their project cornerstone skills to act as peer mediators to help the students deal with minor playground conflicts. They will also act as role models for students throughout the school day encouraging positive behavior – Be respectful, Be safe, Be accountable. 


    We will be having two sessions of PPBS. Each will be 4 months; 1st session will be from Oct-Jan and the second session will be from Feb-May. In the first week of school year, we will be asking the interested 4th and 5th graders to apply to be a part of PPBS team. A team of 24 students will be selected by the staff to be Playground Pals, sometime in August they will be attending a half day training given by Project Cornerstone.