Tasty! Fun! (and STICKY!)

We made cookies on Thursday. 

We got the microwave from Heather. We had to use a recipe. 

First, we checked the ingredients and equipment.
Second, we followed the steps of the recipe.
Third, we put spray on our hands so we did not get stuck to the cookies. 
Then, we finally made the cookies. They were very sticky! We put on red cinnamon candy, too. 

We put the cookies on wax paper. They had to cool over night. We could pick them up on Friday morning after breakfast. 

We had to work as a team. Everyone on the team had to do something. Everybody helped.


The cookies were going to be holiday wreaths. They did not look like wreaths. They looked like globs. But, it was fun.

After we cleaned up, we got to "test drive" the math board games we designed and built this week. 

Period 6/7's game, "Memory," had an Egyptian theme. The math questions were about geometry. They got first place in the competition.

Period 1/2 made a game called "Domaloc Race Track." The math questions were about mean, median, mode, range, and positive and negative numbers. It came out good and it was fun to play. 

Period 8/9 made a game that included Dakota hunting. You could get a horse and then you moved faster. You had to get to the tipi village to win. The math questions were about mean, median, mode and range and also had adding, subtracting and multiplying negatives. There was also absolute value and the 9 x Table.

Building Games

Last week, we got "hired" to build board games for Grade 5-12.

We had to work as a team. We had to make decisions. We had to work on the math, too.

We will get "paid" between $100 and $300 each for our work. We are also competing for a prize.

Each game has a different theme:

• Racing
• Egypt
• Early Dakota Life

Stay tuned so you can see the finished games!

Hard Work Pays Off!

We take the MAP tests three times a year. At the beginning of the year, we wrote down our scores on an index card. We keep it in our Work Box. 

This week, almost all of us finished our mid-year testing. We had a lot of questions in math that we knew how to do now! We had geometry questions, questions about graphs, negative numbers, and even multiplying questions. 

We tried to use our strategies for reading comprehension:

• Skim first, then read it slowly. Skimming and reading are not the same thing.
• Use the clues (context) for new words.
• Go back to the reading because the answer is almost always in there. 

We also used a lot of our test -taking strategies. The most important or helpful ones we used were:

1. Peek at the questions before you read. Then read. Then answer the questions.
2. Go back and look at the reading again to check before you click.
3. "Slash the trash" (eliminate answers you know are wrong).
4. Take your time. There is no need to rush.
5. Ask for breaks when you need them. 
6. Use scrap paper.
7. If you have to guess, do an "educated guess."

Nobody enjoys testing. But we all did our best! Everyone in our program who improved on their score got to put their initials on the Wall of Champions!

Taƞyan ecaƞnuƞ !

• Maza
• Jevon
• Itancan
• Dom
• Tate
• Jaden 
• Robert
• Isaiah
• Glendean

Those who improved their scores will also get to go to a movie in January.

Lakota Nation Invitationals

This week, a lot of Tiospa Zina students, staff, and parents went to "LNI," Lakota Nation Invitational. It is in Rapid City. 

We will have students competing in basketball, hand game, and archery. There is also a Language Bowl competition. 

This year is the first year TZ sent work to the LNI Art Show. \

Our classmate Tahtay Win is one of the artists! Hers is the small diamond design with a black background.

Congratulations for having your work chosen to represent us at LNI!

Lots of Celebrating!

We have been busy here. We have a lot to celebrate!

Robert receives his November award
for Book-a-Month Club

Robert, Itancan, and Lee received the November BAM Club awards. Way to go!! BAM Club means "Book-a-Month." We can read a book or listen to it on Learning Ally apps.

Itancan also completed the Rubik's Cube!

Itancan studied the algorithms until
he succeeded. Good work!

Maza was the first in our program to complete it. He practices a lot. His top speed to complete it is 1 minute and 27 seconds!

Maza was the first to complete his cube!

A lot of us are working on solving the cube, but it is really hard! We can work on solutions when we finish our other work. Sometimes "Cube" is our assignment, too. 

Lee almost has the "white face" completed
in this picture.

This is our Leader Board.

We are in our second quarter of our Śuƞginyaƞgkiyapi (Pony Race). Sister Patrice even got an Attendance Award! It is her second one this year. The teachers can get one every month if they have 100 % attendance.

Sister Patrice looks very proud.

We also are happy to share some of our thoughts with the rest of the school. Here is our hallway display we made after we read about the Medal of Freedom. It is the highest US medal for civilians. It only goes to people who do stuff to make the world better. It is a way of showing gratitude. 

After we did the story, we thought about what we are grateful for. We made posters. A lot of kids look at the posters in the hallway. 

Architecture in Minecraft

by Jevon N.

I am working on an Architecture class. I am learning about how to build stuff. I am learning about different styles of architecture and how you can make the buildings sustainable.

I am using Minecraft as a CAD program (computer assisted design) to build some things. First I had to learn 10 styles of architecture. My first build was a modern house. The modern style has a box design. Modern uses metal, bricks, glass and wood.  It uses modern technology. It is simple with nothing extra. 

Build #1: Notice the elements of
Modern architectural style.

Build #1: Elements of Modern
Architectural Style

The first build is sustainable. That means that it doesn't harm the earth. Sustainable buildings have a lot of wood and stone. Sometimes old tires and plastic, recycled wood can be used. Sustainable architecture can also have wind turbines to generate electricity from the wind. It can have solar. Sustainable means building with the environment in mind. 

For my second build, I am thinking of doing a building in "ranch" design. Ranch design is usually single story and built low to the ground. The homes are in a U or L shape. The side facing the street is usually long. In this area, you can see real ranch-style homes out in the country and near the Holiday hotel. 

Build #2: Foundation for Ranch style home

In my opinion, the architecture course is going okay. I got one build done and started the second. It's hard to build because it never turns out as you want it to. It takes a long time and a lot of work. I am learning a lot of stuff in this class. I am earning an Art credit for all this work.
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Find out more about this Architecture class by visiting the Architecture Workspace tab, above, or by clicking HERE to see the webmix that is being built.

Hack the MAP Test!

by Robert L. and Tate S.

We are not really going to hack the MAP test. We're going to tell you about some tips and strategies for taking the test.

In our opinion, two of the hacks that seem most useful are:

1. Take your time.
2. Before you start reading, PEEK at the questions.

Take Your Time You will want to do your personal best, so you shouldn't just rush through it. You should take your time. Only focus on yourself, and not on anyone else. Even if everyone else is already finished, you should not feel peer pressure. You should stay calm and feel confident in doing your personal best on the MAP test. If you need it, you can ask for more time. The MAP test is not timed.

Peek! Most people just read the passage and answer the questions. However, it's best to know what you are looking for in the passage. So, before you even read, you should look at the questions and answers. Then you will know what you're looking for while reading. 

There are two more hacks we feel are important. 

3. Use the tools that are built into the MAP test on the computer.

We discovered that there are some helpful tools right in the MAP test. You can highlight as you read. You could mark possible answers to questions. There is also a "mask." It is called a "line reader tool." It allows you to focus on one line at a time on the screen. It might help you so you don't get lost while reading. 

4. It's okay to not get every question right. 

You will not know everything on this test. You can't! 

We learned that the MAP test is specifically designed so you will get about half the questions wrong! So don't panic that you're getting them wrong. You should keep trying to get them right. Try your best to make an "educated guess."

Here is a link to learn some more tips. The section on "Tools" is probably really  important to review before you take the test. It has some videos to tell you how each tool works. 

You can also take a practice test at this link. You can try out all the tools.

Mean Cards

In math, mean is not the antonym of nice. 

The mean is the average of a bunch of numbers.

You have to put your cards in order from small to big. You have to add them up. You have to divide by how many cards you got. Use a calculator.

The median is pretty easy. It is the one in the middle. If you don't have a middle (number) it starts to get harder. You have to add and divide by two to make one.

The mode means the ones that show up more than once.

The range is just the biggest number take away the smallest number.

We got to use cards to practice this. 

You have to keep track of what the picture cards mean:
Joker = 0
Ace = 1
Jack= 11
Queen = 12
King = 13

Polygon Mobiles

A mobile is a balancing piece of art. It is like what you sometimes give to a baby to look at. Polygons are 2-d flat closed shapes with straight sides.

In Geometry class we put together polygon mobiles using straws, plastic sticks, tape and yarn. We  had to sort the names and labels and build the correct polygon. We had some really cool quadrilaterals and triangles.

It was fun because we got to build in teams. Tate and Robert worked on the triangles: scalene, isosceles, equilateral, right, and acute. Maza and Itancan worked on the quadrilaterals: concave quadrilateral, trapezoid, square and rectangle.

Tate helped S. Patrice get them up on the ceiling.

By: Tate, Robert and Itancan

Measures of Central WHAT?!

"Measures of Central Tendency."

That's math-language for "numbers that show you something about the middle of a data set."

It's not that hard if you know some good strategies.

First, we had to get some data sets. So, we went to the Weight Room. We planned to do curls and the treadmill, but we found out that the treadmill was gone!

We did the curls. We each had a dumbell. It was five pounds. We had 30 seconds. We counted how many curls we could do. We wrote down the data on our notes.

It was not a contest. We just had to get data.

We did five sets. We counted our own curls and Sister Patrice used her phone like a stopwatch.

We could not do walking on a treadmill. Instead we got data about how many times we could toss and catch some large dice in 30 seconds. We had to keep going if we dropped one. We wrote down our count on our data chart. We did five sets each.

We figured out some ways to get a lot more tosses! 

We used clipboards for getting our data.



The next day we used our data. First, we had to listen to a weird song. Some of us thought it was a stupid song. It did help us remember the difference between median, mean, mode and range, though. We glued it into our Handbook for Adulthood.

After we got the song stuck in our brains, we used it to find the median  of our data. Then we used it to find the mean of our data. The mean is the same as the average.

We will do the mode and range on a different day.