These past few weeks excitement waas in the air as Scholar Quiz took place! Both the Mira Costa High School study body and the Manhattan Beach Middle School student body, both competed in what we like the call, “The Scholar Quiz.”
Teams of 4 compete in different rounds of Lightning Rounds and Bonus Rounds. During the bonus rounds, you can score up to 20 points. Scholar Quiz’s premise is the same as that of the popular game ‘Jeopardy’. Each team includes four students. The the game consists of two teams of four students each, a Reader, Judge, and a Scorer.
Other schools put on their own Scholar Quiz as well. The idea started at Mira Costa High School in Manhattan Beach. Mr. Cooper, former PV High Econ teacher and Football coach, and Barton, PV High teacher, took the idea from Costa. Both teachers attended and taught at Mira Costa High School. Cooper approached Barton, and PV High’s Scholar Quiz began in 2005.
There are three types of questions asked in the Scholar Quiz- Toss Up, Bonus, and Lightning Round questions. A toss up question is one that either team can answer. The first team raising a placard is given the first opportunity to answer. If they answer incorrectly, the second team has a chance to answer the same question. A toss up question may lead to a Bonus Round. The Bonus Round includes a specific topic with four questions. This round is where teammates work together to come up with the final answer. Only the team that wins the Toss Up can benefit from the Bonus Round. A Lightning Round question is one where ten questions are given in quick succession to the teams, with each team being allowed to answer only once. If a team answers a Lightning Round question incorrectly, they are penalized with a loss of points.
Pictured below are the winners from the MCHS Scholar Quiz
Pictured below are the winners from the MBMS Scholar Quiz
For those of you who don’t speak math, this title translates to Study Hut Redondo Beach – located in the Riviera Village and affectionately known as Hut 2 – being much, much better than Study Hut Manhattan Beach (Hut 1). We at Hut 2 felt a recent blog post from Hut 1 warranted a quick, elegant rebuttal in the form of a blog post of our own. Of course this will come in a proper list of exactly why Hut 2 is undeniably much, much greater than Hut 1.
Hut 2 may be smaller, but our reach extends far beyond that of Hut 1! Our extensive list of schools in the south bay we serve include: Alta Vista, Jefferson, Adams, Birney, Parras, Redondo High, Beryl Heights, Riviera Hall, Riviera Lutheran, Dapplegray, Miraleste, Rolling Hills Prep, PV High, PVIS, Peninsula High, Ridgecrest, Chadwick, Bishop Montgomery, Calle Mayor, Richardson, South High, West High, North High, and San Pedro High.
With that many schools, it is natural that we tutor every subject imaginable. Whether it is math, English, science (i.e. biology, chemistry, physics, anatomy, etc.), history, reading, writing or foreign languages, we most certainly have a tutor available to suit your needs!
The claim that Hut 1 offers more attention to its students than Hut 2 hurts us deeply. Anyone who has been tutored at Hut 2 knows how flexible we are with our scheduling. We accept same day appointments and moving appointments with ease because we understand the needs of our busy students.
The manager competition is no contest, especially since we have two! Justin and Tara keep Hut 2 running smoothly regardless of the chaos caused by finals, the SAT or college applications!
The plain fact over here is that we are cool. Rather than a copycat younger brother, Hut 2 is more of an example of where the apprentice has far surpassed the master.
We will concede the point made by Hut 1 that both huts are actually great. What we should really be watching out for together are the El Segundo and Newport Study Huts that look to usurp us from our tutoring thrones!
I recently received an email that gives a good perspective on teachers and their stance on district fund allocation. This thread is admittedly slanted, and only reflects one person’s point of view. Nonetheless, I find it thought-provoking. Please feel free to email info@studyhut.com if you would like to propose a rebuttal. I will post the best response:
Today we spoke about students needing to keep track of their own grades in the last 7-9 weeks of school here since teachers are not posting now as a way to get attention to the 180 days of school issue and to try to convince the school board that teachers who haven’t gotten a raise in some years deserve one. You may know that when money was ultra tight, we teachers agreed to cut our own (and more importantly the students’) work schedule as a way to furlough our salaries and keep the district solvent. [And we know you all chipped in more than your share as well to PEF and I do the same for my kids in MBUSD]. Anyway, it’s an allocation of district revenue issue that everyone should be weighing in on, and teachers are financially stressed and as inflation raises everyone’s cost of living, it is getting more and more difficult to live on a reduced work schedule. Not to mention, should we as a society, be reducing our educational calendar as the rest of the globe certainly is not decreasing theirs? If you disagree with me, I certainly would respect your differing viewpoint, and welcome you to share it with me. But, for better or worse right now, we need to be extra vigilante of our own school performance and stay on top of our homework and prepare for exams. There are only 7 weeks to Memorial Day (including this week) and then final exams are the week after a severely truncated Memorial week (with Monday off and 2 senior project minimum days for students).
This awesome commercial was filmed by students from Palos Verdes High School in the broadcast journalism department. The commercial aired for the first time across campus this week during the Live From 205 news. Live From 205 is a nationally recognized broadcast journalism program, and Study Hut is proud to have been involved in this effort. Congrats to Live From 205 for all of your hard work, and thanks for highlighting our tutoring office in the Redondo Beach Riviera. Check it out:
We did it! Wow! Another great PV AVID car wash. Standing Ovation!
Cars Washed: 260
Teachers in attendance: Ms. Huber, Mr. Kuykendall, Ms. Parkinson, Mr. Heffernan, Dr. Stephany and more……
Teachers who sold car wash tickets: Ms. Damon, Mr. Wilson, Mr. Cormier, Ms. Kuhn, Mr. Chudy, Ms. Parkinson, Mr. Broughton, Ms. Reichert, Mr. Morales and again, probably other sellers.
The grand total of sales is yet to be determined. We will get back to you on that, but rest assured, it was well into the thousands. After all, most of you bought $50 in tickets as part of your AVID dues in the beginning of the year and then there were additional sales (a couple to a few thousand dollars worth in the past two weeks alone by the aforementioned teachers).
Where does the money go: By far, AVID’s biggest expense (and worth every penny) is to our fabulous tutors. While they individually do not make a lot, they collectively are expensive since they’re here 2 or 3 days a week from 8AM to 2PM.
The money is also used to for teacher tutors in January and June. In addition, it is used for classroom supplies and to defer some costs so that it either does not get passed down to you (after all you already paid for it with your dues and car wash) or so that AVID can pick up some of the cost to make something more affordable for everyone. Some expenses include Taco Man lunch in January, chaperone gift cards to thank teachers who spend their day on an AVID trip, site team lunches, AVID T-shirt (coming next week I believe), teacher conference fees and more.
Bottom line is all of the money goes back to the program! And we teachers really appreciate not having to worry about money the entire year and we can do the things we want to do with the students in and out of the classroom. So, THANK YOU ALL!
Thank you tutors Niccole, Brittany, MJ, Justin, and Study Hut for your help and presence.
Also a special shout out Live for 205 for covering and promoting the AVID Car Wash.
SP here. I am really looking forward to my lunch meeting today with all of the rad teachers from the Palos Verdes High School AVID program. Each year during the summer, these awesome teachers (Egan, Whalen, Morales) get together to reflect on the past year. They ask questions like:
What went right?
What could we have done better?
What activities to we need to make more room for?
Which activities and ideas could be eliminated all together?
Certainly the questions and ideas that get bounced around go
much more in depth than these “Level 1” questions (some students are snickering at this), but in actuality, sometimes it is just this casual approach that gets us to the gems.
We are all working together to make sure that the AVID experience is excellent for all students at all levels. We need to make sure that we are meeting the statewide expectations for the program and the curriculum, and we also need to make sure that the goals we set for the students are achieved, and that the activities we decide on and the curriculum we endorse has a direct, positive impact on those goals. Most importantly, we are all looking forward to another amazing AVID year come Fall.
“When am I ever going to use this?” That may just be the most common complaint vocalized by the students at Study Hut. And their concern isn’t entirely unjustified. It really does seem that a solid chunk of the material covered in high school may never again need to be used later in life. No one is going to ask you to regurgitate the quadratic formula any time soon, right? Maybe not—maybe so. Students at Palos Verdes High School are currently participating in a Brobdingnagian battle of brains (Brobdingnag is the land of the huge in Gulliver’s Travels, in case that’s a question). The annual Scholar Quiz kicked off last week and the competition has been heated. Some of the tutors from Study Hut and I had the opportunity to watch our tutees flaunt their knowledge of (seemingly random) topics from across the board, academic and otherwise. I watched as competitors embarked on missions of rapid thought, evaluating solutions to formulas, testing knowledge of geography, and requiring an appetite for up-to-date pop culture and news. As one of the official sponsors for PV’s (and Mira Costa’s) Scholar Quiz, Study Hut has been thrilled about the emphasis on knowledge of both the fundamentals and specifics of topics we teach every day. The final showdown is tomorrow—come out and support your favorite team! Peace out.
Study Hut Tutoring is proud to announce its involvement in this year’s Scholar Quiz at Palos Verdes High School. As many people in the South Bay know, Study Hut has been sponsoring the Scholar Quiz at Mira Costa High School for several years now. And with our involvement level as high as it is with the Palos Verdes High School AVID program, it only makes sense that we are now sponsoring the PV High Scholar Quiz tournament.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with Scholar Quiz, it is a fast-paced academic tournament in which students on teams of four are asked to answer questions as quickly as possible. It is a lot like Jeopardy, except students can stop the reader and answer the questions at any time.
Scholar Quiz represents all that is Study Hut. We love trivia, we love studying, and we love when students work hard and receive the recognition they deserve for all of their efforts. One of Study Hut’s founders, SP, made it to the semis at Mira Costa’s 2003 tourney. Today, many of our tutors volunteer as readers, timers, and scorekeepers for the Scholar Quiz at Mira Costa, and the Scholar Quiz at Manhattan Beach Middle School. MBMS’s Scholar Quiz is always fun, because oftentimes parents come to support their kids, and even students who are not signed up for the program still visit various teachers’ classrooms to root for their friends’ teams. Teachers are always excited to host all of the students in their classrooms, and some teachers get really into it, reading questions and facilitating the tournament in their classrooms like professional referees.
We are as excited as ever to be entering the Scholar Quiz season, and for those of you who go to Mira Costa or PV High, we hope you enjoy the t-shirts this yea.
Spring semester is underway at Palos Verdes High School, and for sophomores in the AVID program, this means exposure to a whole new style of testing. As many of us know, the SAT is a very different type of test. Likewise, the PSAT is meant to serve as preliminary exposure to this different testing style for 10th grade students. For most sophomores, the PSAT is the first test they have ever seen in which there is a penalty for guessing incorrectly.
On a typical exam in history class or biology, a student is encouraged to answer each and every question to the best of his or her abilities. Any question the student is unsure about should be guessed at using strategies such as elimination. The same is not true of the SAT and the PSAT – on these tests, students must determine their own confidence level on a given problem, and must answer two questions:
– Is this question worth spending time considering?
– Can I eliminate one or more answers with certainty?
The truth is that most students have tremendous difficulty with answering these questions, which is why so many students need training for the SAT.
PV High AVID students have a huge advantage, then, because they are exposed to this style of test at an earlier age. It gives students more time to adjust to the style and become acclimated to the scoring system. Moreover, these students receive this training for free, as a perk of being part of such a prestigious program, and because of the excellent relationship between Study Hut Tutoring and the Palos Verdes High School AVID program. It is no wonder than dozens of students are turned away from the program each year, and it should come as no surprise that the application process for 8th graders is so competitive.
Palos Verdes students flock in droves to the Redondo Riviera for coffee, food, and knowledge. Local tutors who have been in students shoes call Study Hut Tutoring, “…a refreshing breath of fresh knowledge, tailored one-on-one instruction, and chill environment.” Located in the heart of the Redondo Beach Riviera, Study Hut Tutoring provides service to students who attend Palos Verdes High School, Peninsula High School, Rolling Hills Prep, Chadwick and Redondo Union High School.
The local and experienced tutors work with middle school and high school students on math, science, reading comprehension, test preparation and study skills. Study Hut tutors are Palos Verdes Estate tutors. Study Hut tutors are local Peninsula tutors who have been there and done; they know how to help in the most effective, directed way.
All of the local Palos Verdes tutors at Study Hut tutoring tailor to each individual student. If help is needed with the SAT or ACT test, the best knowledge is dished out at the Hut.
Give Study Hut Tutoring a call. Study Hut focuses on the needs of each student. Results are achieved through interacting on a one-on-one level.
