We accomplished a few different academic tasks today. First, we continued reading the soccer article which we began last session, and we concluded the section on the evolution of the rubber soccer ball. Austin remembered details from our previous readings and made excellent connections between previous and newly acquired information. We then read an article about Sally Ride; however, before he began reading, we previewed three vocabulary words in the article: (dedication, inspire, and shuttle). Austin assessed his knowledge candidly and checked the boxes to show how well he knew each word. After he finished the article, he checked the boxes and indicated that he better understood the term "dedication" after reading the article. He also completed a "Word Builder" task, and drew lines connecting syllables to show how they built each of the words. Austin answered all the multiple choice questions correctly and achieved 2.5 out of 3 of the open-ended questions correctly. He was encouraged to elaborate in his responses and include the proper noun before using its pronoun. He demonstrated very good grammar and applied the rules of syntax correctly. Austin was reminded to re-read one of the questions as he answered correctly but incompletely; we reviewed alternative answers which more thoroughly answered the question asked. We concluded the session by finishing Chapter 18 in our novel and Austin demonstrated excellent recall of the characters and the phrase used in the 'leit motif' literary technique we learned. Ms. Judie stopped by and commented how Austin clearly displays executive functioning - or higher-order thinking in his responses. Executive function is a set of thinking skills that include working memory, flexible thinking, and self-control. Austin was permitted to choose how he would like to decorate the room we use for tutoring and picked out a poster of Frank Lampard, a soccer player he admires. We will look into finding it and Austin is excited about this. He is also excited to be sharing cake tonight to celebrate his dad's birthday.