Before you read, take a SIP

by Owemaza Owen, Dominic Keoke, and William Jones

This week we talked about SIP. 

SIP means SKIM, IDENTIFY VOCABULARY and PREDICT.

Skim means you scan the page. You don't need to read all the words. You make a list of the headings and sub-titles. You look at all the pictures.

Identify Vocabulary means you look for hard words. Often they are out in a box or bolded. You write them down and find what they mean.

William and Maza skimming an article.

After vocabulary, you predict and ask questions. You think about what the subject will be about. You get clues from skimming the article, You have to guess what it will be about or what happens.

Finally, you write questions. You can use: "I wonder....?" and "I'm curious about..."  The questions are about the article before you read it.

We had to say if we thought this was helpful (using SIP before we read something.) We used a scale of 1 to 10. One means "it stinks. It's not helpful at all." Ten means "This is excellent and really helpful for me!"

Dom checking out the vocabulary as he "sips."

Maza agrees that this approach is a "7." It is pretty helpful. Dom feels that it is about a 10. He finds it very helpful. 

William feels it is closer to a "5" because he feels that he doesn't really need to stop and find vocabulary. "I prefer looking it up in a dictionary or google or sometimes the article just gives the meaning."

The reason we learned SIP was to give us a new or better way to understand what we are reading. Now we can actually look for headings and question things as we go along in a reading. We can try to guess what it's about and then see if we are right.

Octants and Isometric Graphing!

by Elijah Eastman and Itancan Christenson

Today math was really interesting. We did 3-d graphing and used isometric graph paper. Last week, we learned that a Cartesian Plane has four quadrants. (Quad means 4 in Latin). Today, we learned that there are eight "octants" when you have a three dimensional graph. ("Oct" means "8" in Latin.) Use the Roman numerals for your quadrants and octants.





We also learned about the "right hand rule" which tells us the three axes: the horizontal axis, the vertical axis and the axis that tells how close to you the point is. They are labeled the "x-axis," the "y-axis" and the "z-axis."


After we watched a video about this, we tried 3-d graphing on our own. We used isometric graph paper and also an online drawing program to do it. Here is the link so you can try.

We tried to make graphs using cubes and three axes. If you click "inspect" you can see the 3 dimensions and you can move it around. Moving a shape around on an axis is called "rotation."

Itancan created a three dimensional shape that looked like a plane from on top. It could rotate so you could see the edge. 


Elijah tried to make an impossible 3-d shape. But it was impossible! Instead, he made a really cool shape of his own. When you looked at it, it looked like a solid figure. But if you rotateded it, you could see all the parts. 

Your mind "tricks" you because it sees a solid then when you rotate, you can see the trick clearly. It was very clever.

Even though 3 d graphing is hard, we really enjoyed it. We agreed that this was a successful and fun lesson.

We even tried to make a movie to show you Elijah's 3 d shape. Click HERE to see if it works!

Go Möbius this Valentine's Day!

Math can be kind of like magic.

Back in 1858, a German mathematician named Möbius discovered a weird thing about a strip of paper. He could make it have only one side. It is called a Möbius strip in his honor.

Watch this video and make a Möbius strip. Or, make a special Möbius heart for Valentines Day! Mathematicians would argue that a Möbius heart is even better than candy! What do you think?

Choices: A Magazine for Young Adults

 Our program recently got a subscription to a magazine for young adults called "Choices." The subscription was paid for by an organization called "Donors Choose." 

We are using the articles to develop our metacognitive strategies for reading comprehension. These are strategies we can use throughout our adult life, at college and at work.

Right now, we are focusing on the strategies for before we read. We use the acronym "SIP" to remind us of the three main strategies:

S = skim the article
I = identify vocabulary
P= predict what the article will say or ask some "I'm curious..." questions about it.

So, we "take a sip" of the article before diving in to read it.

We used several articles, including one about the sleep habits of young adults. We learned that the research says we should have 8-10 hours of sleep each night.



We also use articles from the tribal newspaper, the Sota for practicing the metacognitive strategies for reading.

When we are finished using the magazines, we are allowed to take them home or share them with others. For example, Itancan found a great and healthy recipe in one of the issues. He shared it with Karen so her class can make it.

Busy Week!

We finished our wall display using information from our visit to the tribe's Adult Skills Seminar.

Check it out!

Graphic artists and display designers

Long, long ago...

Mr. Maxwell let us use his
models. You can see the three
modules (top to bottom: Service Module,
Command Module, Lunar Module)

.... when Sister Patrice was a kid, the first humans got to go to the moon. We did a mini-project about it in our English class. We used a new magazine called ACTION and also watched a video and used Mr. Maxwell's Apollo models. 

We learned about skimming before reading. We got some vocabulary words for the Word Wall. We had to "Pause and Think" during the story to remember what we read. There was a lot of details. 

We used both silent reading and
reading aloud. Then we talked about
what we read. 

We read and talked about the catastrophe of Apollo 13. A catastrophe is a bad disaster. The astronauts almost died. But the engineers (on Earth) and the astronauts (in the Command Module or the Lunar Module) worked as a team. They had to solve a lot of problems together. Then they had to hope that their work was successful.

The Service Module had an explosion. There was not enough power. And, they were running out of oxygen. People watched on TV and everyone was worried.

The Command Module had a heat shield on one end. It gets 5000 degrees hot on the bottom. When they came to earth, they could not talk on the radio for a while so no one knew if they were alive. They were. 

They landed safely. They did a splash down into the ocean. They did not know if the parachutes would open. They did not know if the heat shield would work. But they did. So it was successful.

The Apollo 13 mission was a failure because so much went wrong. It was a success, too. Because they solved the problems by working together as a team.

A picture from an old newspaper. The Command
Module is very small for three people.

They also made a movie called Apollo 13 in case you want to see the pictures in color. 

Adult Life Seminar at Tribal Youth Center

On Wednesday, our Learning 4Life Success class went over to the Adult Life Seminar. It was at the Youth Center. We went to different tables and learned about things like:

• Budgets and bills
• Getting a summer job
• Resumes and interviews
• Going to Sisseton Wahpeton College
• Going to Lake Area Technical Institute
• Opportunities in the Marines

Right to Left: Itancan, Elijah, and Tre learning about
the offerings of LATI

We made a simulation (fake/ pretend) passport before we went to the seminar. We had to get a signature from the person at the table after we introduced ourselves and listened to what they said. 

Michael did more pullups than any other student.
Way to go!

The Marines asked for volunteers to try pull ups. Nyton tried and did a few. Michael did nearly nine!! The Marines at the seminar talked a lot about being ready for challenges. 

William is learning about budgeting and
finances. 

The morning group also had to gather information and ask questions to get ready for our poster project back at school. On Thursday and Friday we worked on the posters. We will put up a display in our hallway on next Monday so others can learn about adult life.

On Friday, we talked about our experiences. We talked about the most valuable parts and we also talked about what might make this event even more helpful for young adults.

Valuable: 

• "role playing" with interviews
• how to manage money
• learning how much college costs
• not too crowded so we could talk with the people at the tables

Might make it more helpful:

• put everything in one place (not upstairs) because some of us didn't get up there and also if someone cannot get up the stairs it isn't fair to keep them out. 
• the flyer had about 15 topics but there was only five or six tables (topics) so we couldn't get to the ones we wanted.
• For example, we wanted to learn about getting an apartment (housing options) and that wasn't at a table.
• the schedule was only in the morning so some kids could not come because their class was in the afternoon. It should be for both.
• It was mostly students getting special education services but a lot of (TZ) students need this information not just us.