Congratulations Graduates!

To All the Graduates of 2019 who were part of Learning 4Life Success:

Itancan and Andrew

We wish you the best as you graduate. 

You have achieved one of your important goals. You had to work extra hard. You did it!

You learned a lot about adulthood. Now you get to do it.

Tahtaywih

You are good role models for all of us. We are happy for you and your tiwahe. 

We hope you come back some time to visit us.

Nina wopida!

Sincerely yours,

Your classmates at Tiospa Zina Tribal School

Subway Sandwiches for Summer Birthdays

Wednesday was our last day of classes. We had Subway sandwiches for lunch together. We ate in the classroom.

We did a little school work. Then we did a lot of clean up work.

"We worked as a team to decorate our classroom, so we're going to work as a team to clean it up for summer," said Sister Patrice.

Jaden, Itancan, Isaiah, TahtayWih and Maza won the Quarter 4 Pony Race! They had 90% or higher attendance during Q4. Way to go! They got a certificate and a Dairy Queen gift card.

Then we took the ponies down and put them away. They were tired. They ran all year since August!

Everyone who completed the Rubik's Cube challenge this year got a certificate, a pin, and a teeny-tiny Rubik's Cube to take home. 

Maza, Avory, Itancan, and Robert also did the 2x2 cube! They got a certificate for that, too.

Three of us liked the Rubik's Cube so much we got our own. Avory even got a professional speed cube that is super smooth and fast. He plans to get faster than his current 1 minute record by practicing new algorithms during the summer.

We all agreed: The Rubik's Cube challenge was scary when we found out about it in August. We all were worried we couldn't do it! If we didn't do it by the end of the year, we would fail math!

Sister Patrice encouraged us and also she told us solving a Rubik's Cube is like adult life. It is hard, but you can do it.  We all did it. At the end of the year, we all felt very happy with how hard we worked to learn how to do it. We felt successful because we did a hard thing and learned about patience. Five of us even mentioned our cube challenge in our final presentation!

Engineering the Last Days of School

"Never stop learning" is good advice.

We kept learning all through the last two weeks of school, right up until the last full day!!

On Tuesday, we had an engineering problem to solve.

Engineering: We had a contest. We had teams. The team got a packet of 3x5 cards, 30 cm of tape, a meter stick, and a Rubik's cube.

We got 10 minutes to research on "index card towers" and then each team got 30 minutes to try to make the tallest tower of index cards that could hold up a Rubik's cube.

We got to do as many iterations  as we wanted. Iteration means you try it once, then you "tweak" it to make it better. Then you test it. Then you try it again. "Tweak" means make a little change. 

We had to think about what happened when our tower fell down. Then we could make a change to it.

It was harder than you think to make a tall tower!

It was also sometimes hard to work in a team because some of us work better alone. But we tried.

    

The tallest was Avory's

at 74.5 cm!

TZ Senior Creates Web Resource for Young Adults

Getting ready for adulthood is a big focus for our classes in Learning 4Life Success. 

Soon-to-graduate Senior Itancan Christenson curated a set of helpful videos for Seniors, ascending Juniors, and graduates who are trying to decide what to do next in life.

Take a look!

LINK to WEB PAGE

Personal Best?

One of the important things about learning is to always be trying to do your personal best.

"Personal Best" means the best YOU can do. It is not about competing with someone else. And, it is not about "I'm smarter than you are, haha!" 

These three "Math-letes" have been working to improve their personal speed on their Rubik's Cube. They are all hoping/ trying to break the 1 minute mark! That takes a LOT of persistence and a LOT of self-discipline!  Way to go!!

Professor, can you please explain that?

This week in Geometry we focused on finding the area and perimeter of complex shapes. This was HARD.

We got through five levels though!

As our last activity for this skill, we had four guest "professors" come to class to solve and then explain a problem. You might recognize them, because they look remarkably like high school students in the Learning 4Life Success program.

Professor A. Renville

Professor O. Owen

Professor R. Lacroix

Professor W. Christenson (right, back)

Here are our solutions. Each professor had to explain exactly how he decided to decompose the shape, why he selected the formulas he chose, and how he found the answer. Like in much of math, understanding WHY is sometimes more important than just knowing "how" to do something!

We learned a LOT this week! It was sure nice of those professors to come to our class to share their expertise, too!

Get a Job and Keep a Job

We are learning about getting and keeping a job. 

In class, we are watching this video. We are taking notes. We put the notes onto stickies. Then we organize them on a poster. Finally, we will write in our Handbook for Adulthood so that we have a good list of things to do, and what not to do, when we go to get a job.

Here is a link if you want to see the video we used.

Here is a picture of our poster. It isn't done yet. We are still adding things.

It's Test Time!

 We will take MAP tests this week. In early May, Grade 11 students will take Smarter Balanced tests.

We take these tests to see how much we improved in math and reading this year. They also show us if we can use what we have learned. 

Taking hard tests is also good practice for college or on-the-job tests. Hard tests show if we can do our personal best when we have to face a challenge.

Here are the top five important test taking tips we learned about:
1. Sleep 8 hours the night before. Your brain needs it.
2. Peek at the questions BEFORE you start reading.
3. Read slowly and carefully. Do not just skim.
4. "Slash the trash" by crossing out the answers you already know are wrong.
5. Use the clues. Inference questions need detective skills.

We also learned that it is okay to not know everything on the test. The tests are designed so that every person who takes it gets about half the questions wrong! The test will ask you to try things you have not yet learned. That's okay! Just take an "educated guess" after crossing out answers you know cannot be right.

We also learned it is important to take your time. All of us have disabilities that make it hard to go fast. So, we have accommodations (changes to how we do the test) allowing us to take our time to do our personal best. That's why we also do the tests in a small group.

Science proves that when you say "I can do this... I can try my best!" to yourself, your attitude will help you learn more and get more correct, even if they are the hardest ones.

Admin V Students

Learning 4Life Success Period 6/7 students invited some of our administrators to compete with them in a game called Quizizz. The topic was our PBLOs (Performance based Learner Outcomes), the six goals for each student at Tiospa Zina Tribal School.

On Thursday, Dr. Jen Heath and Heather Bainbridge took on the challenge!

In the first round of competition, Itancan and Robert, representing the class, clearly clobbered the Admins, holding a solid lead most of the game.

In Round Two, the game plan changed. Team Nike (Jen and Itancan) barely edged out Team Waste Groovy (Heather and Robert), hanging on to a slight lead throughout all thirty-plus questions. The two teams were neck-in-neck until the very end!

Congratulations to the brain-athletes on both teams! The competition was fun and really focused us on our learning! Pidamaya to Heather and Jen for their bravery in the competition!

Our Leader Board is Filling Up!

Each student in Learning 4Life Success knows it is a class requirement to complete their Rubik's Cube by the end of the year.

Some have been working on it since autumn. Some have just recently gotten energized about tackling the challenge.

Our Leader Board lists the following as completing the Cube SO FAR!!

• Maza O.
• Itancan C.
• Avory R.
• Isaiah H.
• Glendean D.
• Robert L.
• Sister Patrice

Congratulations to all! 

And keep up the excellent effort to all who are working on it!! Your name will be here soon!!!!

Sister Patrice keeps saying that solving a challenge like this is "just like adult life."

• It takes a lot of effort but you CAN be successful.
• You can ask your friends and family for help, but they can't do it for you.
• You can find advice and hints online, in videos, and in books, but you have to be willing to try them.
• You have to try, then mess up, then try again, then mess up again, then try again... until finally you figure it out.
• You need to grow a lot of patience and persistence. 
• Sometimes you have to tell yourself to keep on going even when it is hard.
• It often seems easier when someone else is doing it.
• Getting all mad and angry and slamming things around doesn't solve the cube. It's still there when you're done.
• A half-way effort doesn't solve the problem. You need to do the whole thing.
• It sometimes feels really unfair that others do it so easily.
• It can be fun, but it can also be stressful.
• You sure feel good when you are finally successful...and then, for some weird reason, you want to keep right on going and take on the challenge again!

Maza's Computer had a Sense of Humor!!

There we were, solving for the area and circumference of circles, and Maza's computer pops this up on the screen!

Is that funny, or what!?!?

Have some more pi!

Pi Day + 5 = 3.14 + 5=  8.14!

We had to celebrate the rest of Pi Day this week, because we got snowed out last week!
Here is our Pi Day Art, which we created using the radii and diameters of circles that used consecutive digits of pi. We learned how to use a compass to create circles with a given radius. Using a compass turned out to be harder than it looks!

Pi Day Puzzle! Give it a try!

Our Geometry 4Life Success students tackled this one to start our class today. We celebrated Pi Day with problem-solving, videos (here, here, and here, if you wish to see them too) and an art project featuring, yes, you guessed it: Pi and circles! 

Celebrations!

There's a lot to celebrate this week! Here are a few highlights:

• Happy Birthday to our March Men! Kallon, Jevon, and Tate! Woohoo!

(<---- Get the pun??)

• Congratulations to Itancan for winning the BAM Club Award (Book-a-Month Club) for both January and February and to Robert for winning the BAM Club Award for February!

• "Hats Off" to Per 1/2 for scoring 15% to 50% improvements on the VERY challenging zzi.sh online Math game!

• Way to Go Period 6/7- Your work on inferences and with area formulas this week was super! (The new wall decorations look nice, too!)

• Isaiah and Avory: Your efforts were KEY to successfully unlocking the clues for the new Fractions game! Excellent effort! (And, yes, another PUN.) Blog readers can try it themselves on the MATH tab, above.

• Congrats to Tahtaywih and Dom for completing your writing projects. Way to go!

• Yay! Avory has joined Maza and Itancan on the Rubik's Cube leader board for completing the Cube!

We're focusing on our PBLOs!

Do you know the six PBLOs?
We are studying them in our English classes.

We need to memorize all six:
1. Creative Thinker
2. Balanced Individual
3. Self-Directed Achiever
4. Effective Communicator
5. Global Citizen
6. Enlightened Representative

These are part of our ten "Workplace Expectations" this semester.

Each week, for six weeks, we are using a game called "Quizizz" to learn the PBLOs and to understand what they mean. We also discuss them, take notes in our Handbook for Adulthood, and write down ways that we are living them right now.

Would you like to try our PBLO game for this coming week? You can!! It's free and it will challenge you! We are entering our fourth week of our PBLO contests, so this quizzes you on 4 PBLOs!

Go to: https://join.quizizz.com
Enter the game code: 471165

Each Friday, we compete as a team to see our team score. Can you beat us? The range of our Team Scores is between 93% and 100%. The average of our Team Scores is 94% across all our classes so far.

Imperial Linear Measurement

In math we are learning "imperial linear measurement." That means measuring lines (linear) using units like "feet, yards, miles, inches. It is "imperial" because it got started by a king. We are going to do metric in our next unit.

For Valentine's Day we did a "Tower of Hearts." It was pretty hard! We had to do estimating. Then we had to build a tower as tall as we could go. We measured it really carefully (without tipping it over!)

 We had to come up with different strategies to make the towers. A strategy is a plan.

We also got to figure out how many hearts it would take to make a tower as tall as we are. If you are 5'6" tall, it will take 265 hearts! 

We couldn't make an actual tower that tall but we did the math to figure it out. We even figured out how many hearts equals the tallest building in the world! The Burj Khalifa is in Dubai and it is 2,717 feet tall. That is 36,604 inches or 146,416 candy hearts.

When we got done, we got to eat the hearts. But, not 146,416 of them.