Graduation

Sheldon

May 19, 2018 we celebrated commencement. Five students who participated in Learning 4Life Success were among the 32 who graduated. 

These young men and women have put in a lot of hard work. Now they launch themselves into adulthood!

Sheldon is already in college at Sisseton-Wahpeton College.

The others plan to go to Lake Area Technical College, Sisseton Wahpeton College, or into the workforce.

Shelby (L) and Tre (R)

Brandon (R)

Kenzie (L) and Curtis (R)

Congratulations to each of you, and to your family and tiospaye!

Final Presentations

Final presentations are required of every Tiospa Zina Tribal School High School student.

Tre and his guests at his Final Presentation: Gr 12

For students in the Morning group, the project starts during the first week of the semester and concludes with a 20 minute presentation to five invited guests.

It's a chance to "stand and deliver" their personal analysis and reflection on their learning across all their classes. 

Each student also demonstrates proper etiquette in making a formal introduction and introduces themselves in Dakota. They then share their twenty-five slide presentation, highlighting specific ways they have grown as learners and as young adults during the year.

Itancan and his guests at his Final Presentation: Gr. 11

Each student shares his portfolio of work samples and also explains his Handbook for Adulthood, in which he has gathered notes, ideas, "how tos" and other pertinent learning that will help him once he is on his own.

As he finishes, each learner also shares his choice of "Words of Wisdom" that have become meaningful, and then receives feedback and fields questions and comments from the audience. 

Our program's Final Presentation is a "capstone," bringing together a full year's or semester's learning. It is also excellent preparation for the many times these students will stand before colleagues in their college or employment environment.

It's always exciting to see how careful preparation pays off! 

CONGRATULATIONS to these young adults!

Word Wall

We did it!

Our Word Wall in August.

Word Wall May 16,2 018

Working together, we added vocabulary to our Word Wall and met two exciting milestones!

First, we BEAT First Semester's total. Then, by collaborating across classes, we beat LAST YEAR'S best total, setting a new "World Record!"




Sister Patrice carefully added this year's date to the wall so that next year's classes will know what they need to do to beat Learning 4Life Success 2018!

But, our Word Wall was not just about words. It was about meanings and concepts from all different subjects.

We encountered our words in videos and articles. We used our words verbally in sentences. We wrote with our words. We did vocabulary activities on a computer program called Quizlet using our words. And, during our final couple of weeks of the school year, we held competitions to practice our vocabulary.

On the last day of classes we celebrated our Word Walk efforts. Each student got to pick one word, their favorite, from the Wall.

After initialing the back of the card, the words will be carefully saved over the summer so that next year we can start with these.

Life skill for Learners: Write a research paper

If you are going to college, you will need to write research papers. This year, our morning class took this on as one of three major projects for second semester.

We picked a topic. We found resources. We learned how to use an index card system for citations and notes.

We used the library to find resources. We used the South Dakota State Library System database to find resources. We also learned how to use Google Scholar.

We got two kinds of index cards. The ones with the color on them are to write down all the information for our resources. We had to write the author, title, publisher, place it was published, and the date it was published. If it is from the internet, we had to write down other information. We had to get at least five resources. Itancan got almost twenty for his paper!

We also made a color card for each of the subtopics in our paper. We had to have at least four subtopics.

Then we used regular index cards to take our notes.

We had to put the information in our own words or else use quotation marks.
We numbered our resource cards 1,2, 3, etc. Then we just wrote the resource number on our notecard. We could see where we got the information very easily.

After we got our information, we organized it. We put the note cards by the subtopics. Then we made a mind-map ("spider map") so we could see how it all fits together.

We took pictures of our spider maps and printed them out so we could write our paragraphs from them.


We wrote our first draft. We could cut and paste to get the paragraphs in the right order. Then we had to edit the paper so it was better.

We had to write an opening paragraph and a concluding (ending) paragraph.

Then we had to put in all the citations. We had to be very careful because we had to use "MLA" style. It is tricky.

When our papers are all done, we will get a grade. This is how we are going to get a grade. CLICK HERE. 

We don't stop learning...

Reviewing math skills needs skill,
strategy, and luck!

We have ten school days left. But we keep on learning.

Our seventh hour math class is making two math games as our final project.

One is going to be a board game. One is going to be a computer game "Asteroids."


In our Period 3-4-5 class, we are getting ready for our Final Presentations. We have a portfolio of work samples. We have our Handbook for Adulthood  that we wrote. We have 25 slides and a script we made. We made invitations to five guests to come to our Presentation. 

Tre prepares his Portfolio

All year long we did "Earn and Learn." We earned a wage and bonuses. We got a raise if we got a lot of bonuses. We learned to budget for expenses, pay bills, pay rent, and keep our checking account. We paid by check and now we have debit cards. We learned how to save up for something big. If we lost a lot of money because we got violations, citations, or penalties, then we did not have enough to buy something big.

Itancan bought an art set with his mazaska!

We learned to fill out order forms. We paid by check or by our debit card. We had to make sure we could still pay our rent and bills even after we bought something! We want to do "Earn and Learn" again next year because we learned a lot. Now we know the basics. In the simulation next year, we will have to pay income taxes and health and car insurance!