10/7 Blog

THRIVE Director Notes

Posts on this Blog will be directed to help families see what is going on in our THRIVE Program.  Items discussed on the Blog have already occurred. To keep updated on what’s coming up please refer to the THRIVE activity calendar or UCM activity calendar.

First-Year Students:

University Foundations :

This week we started Chapter 4 on how people learn. A couple times during the week we went over our to-do list.  Students were asked to email Dr. Manning a list of classes they are interested in for next semester. Wednesday we walked over to the Student Union to see where everyone's new classes are that start on Monday. We finished the week taking notes on Notability on the chapter. We also discussed what the word elaborate means. Students worked on some examples of how to construct a paragraph and expanding ideas and thoughts.

Daily & Independent Living Skills:

In DILS we began talking about how to succeed at a job, acceptable behaviors and attitudes that lead to success in the workplace, and how to work effectively with others which included a section on empathy, communication, and compromise.

Technology Literacy:

We've had a busy week in Technology Literacy with students completing their "All About Me" PowerPoint presentations. We began presenting on Thursday and students so far are doing a great job in both creation and presentation of their slides.

Relationships 101:

Today's topic was harassment, love, and infatuation.  We discussed the definition of each. And who decides if it's considered harassment.  They should use the PowerPoint to complete their homework.

Second-Year Students:

Transition Planning I:

We are discussing the 3rd Habit - "Put First Things First".  We are continuing working with money and budgets. The students are doing a good job with this.  They have a lot of questions and some of the students have never had to work with money and budgets.  

-  The students had a mid-term paper due this week.  The students had to write a 2-3 page paper on their internships.  Overall the students are doing a good job of utilizing their resources to help with their writing skills.  Their final will consist of writing another paper but that paper will be longer. We know the students may get frustrated with writing papers but we also believe writing with good structure, punctuation, and paragraphs is essential. 

Internship I: 

The students are discussing what characteristics make a good employee and what makes a good employer.  We will start discussing interview questions and how an individual will be prepared for an interview. The students will start their mock interviews in about two weeks.  The students will do two mock interviews before the semester is over.

Plato:

All students had new assessments in Reading, Writing and Math last week. All second-year students completed all their plato time and none of them were in mandatory. A couple of the first-year students did not complete all of the assessments and they had to be reopened for them. Some first-year students are having trouble remembering to complete Plato. I have suggested to them that they look at their to-do list and their commitment calendar several times a day in order to stay on track.

THRIVE Activities:

Mentor Activities: This weekend was Homecoming.  The mentors helped the students attend and participate in the various activities around campus.  We’ll try to post on Facebook...

Important upcoming dates:

Down Syndrome Guild Walk: For the 2nd year THRIVE is a sponsor for the Down Syndrome Guild of Greater Kansas City’s Step up for Down Syndrome.  We will be putting together a team of 10 students that will go to Arrowhead Stadium to walk for this event, held on October 26th from 10 am to 2 pm.  We are excited that we are able to do this and see our students show support. We have 13 signed up. I’ll be contacting the students to confirm this today, so I can get them registered..

Softball:

This week we ended our Fall Softball league.  We ended up 1-3-1 for the season. We will look at having another fun time in the Spring with another team.

Special Olympics group to be on UCM Campus:

We have a group from Special Olympics attending UCM in late October.  We will have a couple of students help with giving tours of campus and will also have a group of students help with an activity in the evening.  We’ll be talking more to the students as we get more information.

Homecoming Weekend was this past weekend.  We hope you were able to come and join in the parade, games and all the activities.  If not, please take a look at our Facebook page as we will try to keep the pictures coming.

"This blog is a programming blog written by the director and staff of the THRIVE Program on the University of Central Missouri campus.  This blog doesn't accept any form of cash advertising, sponsorship, or paid topic insertions. 

The views and ideas expressed on this blog are purely the blog owners.  This blog does not contain any content which might present a conflict of interest.  We are simply telling you what we plan to do in our program and using the blog to help spread what we are doing on a weekly basis."