Last week we obviously stayed busy with state tests.  Actually, I think the students don’t mind too much since they get an extended break each day.  We were able to get one new topic covered that week on Steps in the Decision Making Process and took a quiz over it.

This week we have tried to get back on the full work track.  However, as usual this time of year,  there are so many end of year activities it is hard to do.   On Monday, we had the annual “Reading Counts” auction for all 7th graders.  Some students saw the rewards of their reading efforts by going home with a handful of “loot”.

Today the band has gone on a field trip which took over half of the gold team.  The remaining students in class are learning to be team players.  On Wed. band will be out again to practice for their concert and on Thurs. there is a “Reading Counts” field trip.  I think we will be participating in some science activities as a team while others are gone the next couple of days.

One way or another we are still learning whether it is cooperation, team skills, communication or other basic skills needed in the workplace today.

We have spent all of this week traveling around Kentucky’s regions.  Core content wants us to know how jobs differ in each of Kentucky’s regions so we took an imaginary trip to each of those.

We have studied how climate, terrain, population and natural resources have an impact on jobs in each region.  For instance, coal mining is not a job in the Bluegrass region of our state and working at one of the state’s largest universities is not available in the Eastern Coal Fields.

We have had a lot of fun learning a lot of information about our wonderful state with all its beauty and resources.

Friday we had a big unit test over the material.  Hopefully, when all are graded we will have smiles on most of our faces.

We began the week working on learning about goal setting.  We learned an acronym so that we can set excellent goals

S.M.A.R.T.

S – specific, simple

M- measurable

A – attainable,  accountable

T – timely

We wrote and rewrote our goals so they weren’t so general and also watched a video on goal setting.  On Wednesday we did a goal setting activity and took a goals quiz.

The last two days this week we have been talking about our neighbors–our county neighbors that is.  I felt it was important that they know how many counties surround Harrison, a little bit about each county including our own.  Do you know how many counties touch Harrison–check with your students to take sure you’re right.

Wow!!   I think everyone will welcome a break after the busy week we have had.  There have been so many extra curricular activities plus activities at school; it’s almost hard to keep up with it all.

Academically, we have worked on our conflict resolution skills.  One day we tried some role playing with it which was great fun.   I think we have some future actresses and actors.  On Thursday we had a test over conflict resolution and our usual 2-week bellringer quiz.   Wednesday we played an educational game of career bingo.  Hopefully, students learned about many careers they were not familiar with.

Friday was a follow up to the financial unit we had a couple of weeks ago.  We had two guest speakers from Kentucky Bank talk about saving and investing.  The students had so many questions for them they could hardly keep up.    Kentucky Bank was also generous with gifts for the students.     We found out every one of the students can be a millionaire by the time they retire if they invest $125 a month in stocks yielding around 8% interest.  I imagine some will set this as a goal.  Thank you Kentucky Bank for coming and sharing.

The culmination to our week was a faculty/student floor hockey game for reward time.  Our musical  entertainment for this event was “out of this world”.   Faculty won and will get jeans days when we return from Spring Break–sorry kids.

We spent most of the week on financial information.  However, on Monday we took a test for our performance predictor of the K-prep test.  The overall scores were pretty good–a few students scored 100% on the test–obviously this was considered distinguished.  These reports are intended to be an indicator of how well each student and the school as a whole will do on the spring test.

The remainder of the week we have worked on learning about financial institutions and investing.  We have talked about commercial banks and credit unions; savings accounts, certificate of deposits, stocks, bonds, and mutual funds.

Several of the students showed great interest in this area and had lots of questions.  We found out that they need to start saving at a young age to have a good long term investment total.  Hopefully, some will be millionaires by the time they retire!!

We have finished the basics of checking accounts this week.  Hopefully, everyone knows quite a bit more than when we started.   We did a quiz show type activity to review for the test we had today.  Right now I’m hoping I have a lot of A’s on this test, but only grading them will tell the whole story.

Next week looks like a busy week with activities.   Mon. we will be having spring pictures taken, Tues. band will be in competition, Kuna students will be gone, a bus drill on Thursday and no school on Friday due to KEA meetings.

I hope to get a little work out of those who are here.  I wanted to continue a little further with the checking accounts and have them actually write some checks and balance their account.  Will update you next Thursday.

As teachers we have grade level meetings, grades due for the 3rd nine weeks, and my department is having meetings to work on the state’s program review project.  Never a dull moment around here!!

We have finished our unit on budgeting and taken a test over the material.  These were some of the best test grades I’ve had, and I was very pleased.  “Check” with your student to see how they did on the test.

We have begun a unit on “check”ing accounts.  I did a little pre-test to see what they knew and found out we definitely needed to cover the topic.  We have gotten off to a good start and will continue next week.

Right now I have just done a “check” on the weather.  Hopefully by the time you read this, the storm  situation will have passed and all are safe.   Naturally the atmosphere is a little stormy inside the school once they found out they would be going home early!!

“Check” back next week on the blog to see what we’ve been up to.

We have completed a unit on listening skills.  In the unit we learned basic listening skills, did some listening activities, and watched a video over learning to be better listeners.  I think you will agree many people in our lives have selective listening.  Last Friday we had a test over listening, organizational skills, and time management.

We have covered budgeting and credit cards this week.  We had a video with actual young people who had gotten themselves into a great amount of credit card debt–one girl had accumulated $50,000 of debt.  We discussed the advantages and pitfalls of credit cards, and the remainder of the week we have worked on budgets.

We have learned budgeting terms and have made a proposed budget.  Hopefully, students will be a little more aware of how much it takes to live today.

On Monday we will have a bellringer quiz and on Tues. we will have a test over budgeting and credit cards.

Your student is finally finished with their ILP.  We began this project quite some time ago, but have had numerous interruptions in getting them finished.  Along with getting their ILP 100% complete on the computer, they have also written 2 career summaries,  a post secondary summary and a piece for their writing folder.  They have all been working very hard.   It was time consuming, but well worth the effort.

Now that we have this finished, we will be able to move on to other topics.  They worked some last week on Time Management, had already covered Organizational Skills and will move on to Listening Skills next week.

Hopefully, the snow will end over the weekend and we will be able to get a full week in.  The school year is moving on very quickly and spring will be here before we know it.

It was a short week with the holiday although it actually seemed like a normal week.  Two of the days we worked on our ILP’s in the computer lab.  If you have never looked at your student’s personal ILP, please ask them to show theirs to you.  They can do it from home if you have the internet.

On Thurs. we had a quiz over our bellringers, turned in our School Summary report, got back a test over PSO and watched a motivational video.

Friday we began talking about being organized and its importance.  We watched a video of three high school students who were disorganized and saw the impact it had on them and their friends.  Next week we will be going back to the computer lab to work on ILP’s so we will finish the organization lesson as soon as we get back to the classroom on a regular basis.