Ryan and I recapped his 9th grade year. He read To Kill a Mockingbird and Romeo and Juliet as long works. He read various short stories and did a poetry unit, as well as weekly vocabulary and grammar. He wrote one literary analysis essay and one persuasive research paper. I asked Ryan to bring in his papers if he still has them. We discussed the skills we will work on this summer: We decided on reading comprehension, writing and handwriting. Today, Ryan showed me pictures that he took of his Hawaii trip. I had him choose one of the photos and write a descriptive paragraph on it. This will help me to see where he is with handwriting, vocabulary and creative writing. Tomorrow, I am going to start with a short story by Liam O'Flaherty called "The Sniper" to assess Ryan's reading comprehension. We also decided we will do a spelling/vocabulary lists each week and have a quiz next session. I will start this tomorrow with vocab words from "The Sniper." We are also going to work on Ryan's organizational skills. Ryan came in today with a binder from this past school year with random math and English papers stuck into every crevice of the binder. I gave him some dividers and we separated all of his papers into math and English sections and in order of unit. We will continue to work on this throughout the summer.