9/28 Blog Post

 

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.

Notes from Mr. B:

This next week is Week 8 on our school calendar. This is important for the parents to know.  This is midterm week.  This means that our first-year students will have finals in their 8-week classes of Bowling and Valuing Differences.  We’ve alerted our mentors and volunteers that assist our first-year students to give them a hand.  This may mean that we have some students that are more nervous than normal.  This is also midterm for our other students which may mean a Midterm Test and/or paper for some of their classes, it all depends on what their elective teacher does.  Then the other point that First-Year parents will need to know is that this means the first-year students will have a new class in Week 9.  Mrs. Southard will work hard to let them know next week where they are going and making sure they know what students are going to the same class.  

This also means that all parents will be getting a Progress Report from the THRIVE team.  The week after Midterms (October 12-16th) the THRIVE group will be going over the progress of each of our students and getting any added information from their elective classes and (2nd-Year Students) their Internships.  We will attempt to get them out to students and parents by the 19th of October.

First-Year Students:

University Foundations: Debra Southard  Reminders were given about using the activity app and the discussion board. An outline of Chapter 3 and a ½ page on Alvin Law were both due on Tuesday. Those were assigned last week.  Both assignments were explained last week and this week.  The outline was demonstrated a couple of times in class. Tuesday we played Kahoots to help review for the test. Students were highly encouraged to start studying Monday for the test that was Thursday. Friday we discussed determination and what that can mean to someone with a disability.  We began a movie called “Door to Door.” A true story of a man with Cerebral Palsy. A man that used his determination to be a success.

Daily & Independent Living Skills:  Lisa Garnier

We talked about the importance of knowing what medications we take and what we take them for, how to store them properly, and how to manage them. There was a review of mask-wearing and social distancing guidelines on campus with reminders of why we do this and how important it is to everyone’s safety. For our Career topic this week, students learned about job skills and responsibilities and were assigned to make a list of hard skills and soft skills in job postings for the career they are interested in. On Friday we continued our budgeting conversation and reviewed 50/30/20 budgeting and introduced Zero-Based Budgeting. 

Technology Literacy:  Lisa Garnier

This week I introduced their PowerPoint presentation assignment. We learned about PowerPoint and the features available to create slides, and we learned about the proper way to create a slide such as using the slide as a visual aid to supplement the oral presentation of the information. 

Relationships 101: Debra Southard

We finished up discussing dating. Students pretended they were the parents which brought up some interesting discussions about making decisions for their children.  We talked about how our personal values guide our behaviors. We discussed different ways to say “no”. We even discussed how to break up with someone. Number 1 was never break up in a text message.

Second-Year Students:

Transition Planning I: Gary Manning

We are discussing getting outside our comfort zones and trying new things.  This is hard for some of us as individuals.  We like being secured and comfortable.  We have had a student try out for the talent show on campus and we have another student going to run the color run on campus.  Further, we are discussing things we cannot control and why do we let these things bother us.  We can control our attitude and how we try our best but we cannot control what other individuals do.  

Internship I: Gary Manning

We are almost at mid-term and that means the students and supervisors are starting to fill out internship progress reports.  The students have to fill one out on themselves to help with self-reflection and then we compare the student’s one to their supervisor’s report.  This helps with the students to learn, grow, and work on professional skills.  

 

Plato: Debra Southard

Plato. Students as a whole are getting their plato completed on time. Students are reminded daily to work on plato. Setting a timer is always helpful. Monday students wrote down their time on each and calculated how much time they need to complete the week. 

THRIVE Activities:

Mr. B’s Old Drum Bus trip.

On Monday Mr. B took a group of first-year students on the Old Drum bus to help them know how to use it.  The students have to have exact change or they can purchase bus cards for $6, $15, and $30 dollars from the bus driver.  Here are some pictures of the first trip…

Mentor Activities: Goin Downtown with Kim-

This weekend we had Family Weekend at UCM.  We’ve posted some of the pictures from the events.  Here are some of the pictures.

Getting ready for setup.  Some of our students were volunteers for this great event.

Working hard/Running Hard:

What a Finish…  One of our students came in 2nd overall.  Great job.

We also had a great turnout for our Family Meet n Greet:

Great Job Everyone!!  For more pictures please join our THRIVE Facebook and/or Instagram pages.

Important upcoming dates:

The next cooking activity is Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo, can’t wait to hear about this one.  The students that are involved have already accepted the invitation.  I’ll let you see what they did next week.

"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."