Camera work produces a "rough cut" of our video

Today, we produced the rough draft of our video. But, in videography, it is called a "rough cut."

Maggie was in charge of the storyboard. She made sure our shots were in the correct order. 

Ian and Lorelei volunteered to be our camera techs. 

We used two iPad cameras to get two angles of shots. 

We tried to do both over-the-shoulder and close up shots.

We did two "takes" of each shot so we can pick the better one.


Raycee volunteered to do the graphics. She made the title page for the video. 

The storyboard helped us keep on track.

Shelby volunteered to be our talent for the video. When you see the video, it will be her hands!

Tonight Sister Patrice offered to edit our rough cuts into the final cut.

Tyrone offered to be our audio engineer, so he and Tre will work on the voice-over narration tomorrow.

Our class agreed that Tre's voice is perfect for the narration!

We will be adding the audio track to the video track using Window's editing software.

Stay tuned for our video!

Producing our First Video

We're glad Ian is tall!! He is putting
the storyboard up on the wall.

Before Fall Break, the class began planning for a video. It is our first video production. We are producing a video about "How to write a check."

So far, we learned industry-specific vocabulary such as:

• storyboard
• scene
• plot
• talent
• setting
• props
• voice- over narration
• close up
• wide-shot
• over-the-shoulder shot
• tracking shot

This is the storyboard. Each card is one scene. The cards tell if it is a close-up or a tracking shot.
A storyboard is like an outline for a video.

Before Fall Break, we made our storyboards. A storyboard is a way that producers plan the scenes for videos and movies. We decided what scenes we needed for our message. We figured out what type of shot we needed for each scene. We also drafted the narration for each scene on the storyboard cards.

After Fall Break, we will shoot our scenes and edit them.

If the video turns out good, we might upload it to YouTube. Stay tuned for more!

Expeditions to Hawaii and the Himalayas!

We are finishing our "Money Management" unit with several projects.

 Tyrone and Tre prepared for their expedition to Shangri La, a lost city in the Himalayas.

They got a small grant from the Expedition Fund for $1,000.00. They deposited it in their checking account, using a deposit slip, and updating their check register. Then, they worked together to decide what type of gear they needed for their expedition. They then "purchased" the gear online, sending a correctly written check for "payment" and, of course, updating their check register.

Their team did an excellent job on the poster about their expedition.

So did the second expedition team. This team went to the Hawaiian island of Maui, to visit Volcano National Park. Their expedition's goal was to set up a basecamp, then take a day hike up the volcano.

 This team was able to buy all its "Needs" and also all of its "Wants" from their wish list. They got $1,500 as their grant because there were more people on this team.

Shelby, Lorelei, Raycee and Ian completed the expedition's poster and all the financial record keeping.

They received two incoming checks, deposited them, entered them in their check register, and then wrote checks to purchase their gear.

Their colorful poster shows a map of the island they are exploring, and also shows a brochure with some facts about Hawaii. The goal of this expedition was to explore a volcano and collect samples of lava rocks. Their research helped them learn that they'd need sturdy hiking boots to hike across the rough hard lava.

Each team earned points for various tasks they completed.

The team that planned the expedition to Hawaii earned the most points for this game.

So, the people on that team won a "10-minute free time" coupon.

They can redeem (use) it any time before the Winter Break as long as their Free Time does not distract from other students' learning.

Stay tuned for two more big projects!

1. We're producing our first video.

2. We're creating a display for December 7, Family Literacy Night. It will be about "Financial Literacy."

Why are people wearing safety pins?

Some of us paid a lot of attention to the presidential elections. We voted in school. We thought about the TV ads we saw. We asked good questions in class and sometimes at home. Now we know who will be our next president.

Some of us are worried about racism, sexism, and hate speech and violence. We do not want it to get worse. We want to show solidarity, not hatred and racism.

Some of us in our class decided to take action. It is a symbol. It is an act of non-violent resistance to hate and prejudice.

Will you wear a safety pin so people will know, without anyone even saying it, that you are a friendly face and they are safe with you?

Will you wear a safety pin to show that anybody who is afraid because there is hatred or prejudice can know that you do care?

Will you wear a safety pin to symbolize that you are a safe person and you will stand up for other people?

Will you stand in solidarity with the people in our world today who need to feel safer? 

We will.

Will your safety pin tell our world you do not want fear, anger, prejudice, racism, sexism, and prejudice against people with disabilities?

Join in. Spread the word on YOUR social media.

#safetypin   #safespace

[We got this idea from http://www.elle.com/culture/news/a40706/safety-pins-election-trump/]

Congratulations!

Today we had an awards assembly. The whole high school attended. 


Four students from our Life Success classes got awards. 










CONGRATULATIONS to:
(l to r)

Maggie Yankton: "A" Honor Roll
Lorelei Barse: Completing College Applications
Raycee Brown: "B" Honor Roll
Shelby Neilan (front): Completing College Applications

You've made our tiwahe proud!!

College applications, anyone?

Our Word Wall grows daily!

Treyton showed good leadership on this project.

This week in the high school was “college application week.” Staff wore college branded clothes. Teachers put up signs about their colleges. Seniors filled out applications. Our class did too. We also learned a lot of college application Word Wall words.

• ACT= the hard test you take before college
• Transcript= official list of your courses and grades
• Enroll= join or become part of
• Selective Service= men age 18 and older must fill out a form so the federal government can maybe draft them if the US needs soldiers
• Primary residence= where you live most of the year
• Tuition= money you pay for a class or a course
• Associate degree= a two-year college degree
• Bachelor degree = a four-year college degree
• Marital status = are you single, married, divorced or widowed?
• Dependent children = children under 18 that are your legal responsibility because you’re a parent or guardian

A "spider map" is not an arachnid. It's a visual outline used before writing an essay.

Doing the Sisseton Wahpeton College application helped us learn new skills that help prepare us for life beyond college. Learning to fill out college applications also teaches us how to do job applications. When we do applications now we will know how to do them in the future. It also helps us learn how to remember our social security number and personal information. This also helped us find out how well we do applications and what we need to work on to improve our application skills in the future.

Collaborative writing is challenging.
Tyrone is good with typing.

Doing this practice also helped us to not fear “applications.” It helped us feel confident about doing them. For example, the practice will help when Ian Wynde fills out his Military application to join the military after graduation.

Most of us are going to college after high school. Tyrone plans to go to United Tribes College to study diesel mechanics. United Tribes has free tuition for Native American students.

We use Google Apps. A projector lets us put our draft up on the white board
so we can more easily see how to improve it. We also use a Google "extension" that
will read our work out loud to us.

Ian also helped to type our article.

Tre plans to go into paleontology as a major. Maggie wants to join the Air Force and be a pilot after graduation or college. Shelby and Lorelei want to go into law enforcement. Raycee wants to study dentistry or nursing. Jameson wants to study technology.

That’s the end of this blog article. This is the class of Sister Patrice signing off and we’ll see you on our next blog.  

AUTHORS: Treyton Neilan, Tyrone Lawrence, Ian Wynde

Editorial Support: Sister Patrice Colletti

Photography: Mostly Sister Patrice because we were busy writing

Hands On Learning

One of our "Word Wall" vocabulary words is "kinesthetic."

If you are a kinesthetic learner, you learn best by doing, acting, trying something, or moving around.

In our class, we learned about kinesthetic when we learned about "VARK." Understanding VARK means we know how we each learn best. We try to have learning activities that use all the different ways of learning:

• Visual (watching or seeing)
• Auditory (listening)
• Reading/writing (reading or writing)
• Kinesthetic (moving)

Here are some examples:

We did a map reading activity. We got clues as to where we were going on an imaginary trip. We had to use an atlas, a South Dakota highway map, a ruler, scrap paper, Google Maps, and the internet to figure out all the clues and get our team to the secret destination.

We "traveled" to a place near Rapid City, SD and visited the Hotrod Institute. This is a real place! http://www.hotrod.edu/ where you can get training in several specialty areas.

Once we figured out where we were going, we had to use the web to research some things about the Hot Rod Institute: costs, classes offered, and more. A few of us even added this link to our browser's "bookmarks" so we can visit it again. 

Who knows? Maybe one of us might attend the actual Hotrod Institute after we graduate from high school! They accept a limited number of students each semester.

Here is another example. 

We explored the insides of several laptop computers that no longer work. We discovered that working on a laptop was a little like fixing a small car's engine- you have to practically take the entire thing apart to get to one specific  piece!

We identified the hard drive, heat sink, RAM, camera, audio, CPU, circuit boards, and other parts. We also had to deal with about a hundred tiny screws. 

We also disassembled a keyboard to salvage the parts. We had to deal with scissors switches that seemed to have a life of their own as they flipped around the room!

We agreed- this is a type of activity we'd like to do again.