Analise began the session by writing an apology letter to me for accidentally forgetting to return a bracelet I had let her wear during yesterday's class session She said she had meant to give it back to me and didn't mean to leave with it. I told her I didn’t think she meant to leave school with it but that it was a good thing I remembered and got it before Martha, her nanny, had pulled out of the parking space in front of the school. I told her I thought it was an accident, which turned into a teachable moment focusing on letter-writing, formatting and capitalization. We also discussed the character traits of trustworthiness, responsibility and sincerity. We did not dwell on this for too long but I did want to comply with mom's request to have Analise write me the apology to insure she understood the importance of returning any items she asks to borrow.

Anaise was then asked to tell me the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff. She re-told the story in an animated way and I called her attention to the descriptive adjectives she had used to consolidate prior learning gains evidenced in earlier sessions. We then watched a short animated clip of the story and Analise was asked to re-tell it on paper, using or one or two sentences for the beginning, middle and end. She enjoyed illustrating the sections, adding pointy teeth to the troll and attention to detail on the goats. Analise demonstrated a good understanding and recall of the events and the correct order in which they occurred. The book afforded us a good opportunity to review the consonant blend "tr"...the story used such sentences as, "trip trap, trip trap... across the bridge traipsed the troll." Analise enjoyed the video and making predictions, although she opted not to color the pictures as it appeared that she had grown tired from all the writing, so we moved onto a review of contractions and learned about base words in the Mack Skill text booklet. Analise was told that a base word is a word that can have a beginning (prefix) or ending (suffix) added to it which changes the meaning when a new word is formed. She appeared to grasp this concept well and correctly identified base words in a series of three examples. The Language Arts session concluded with having Analise complete sentences correctly using contextual clues to select the correct option from a choice of three in a word bank. She wrote them in the boxes provided and completed the activity just as lunch was starting. Overall, it was a most productive session.