Cade is close to automaticity with alphabetic knowledge; he sequenced the alphabet much more quickly today, identified the vowels, read closed and silent-e syllables, and voiced the sounds of all letters and digraphs. Next, we reviewed syllablicating VC/CV words. I am seeing improvement in this skill. For spelling practice, I dictated irregular words (his, you, said, was, want) and regular words (silent e words) as well as a sentence ("She said that she wants to go home.") We practiced reading CVC and silent-E words by playing a round of SLAP! To conclude, we co-read two oral reading fluency passages.
Today PJ and I worked in an online game. It was a mystery where PJ had to solve equations to find the missing clues. He had a good time with it. He was given equations where he had to use inverse operations to solve. Then he matched the numbers to the numbers in the clues. He was able to find the culprit each time.
Andrew was 14 minutes late for class today. I asked him why, he said he was having a bad day.
Today we did an activity to practice his understanding of the 3 main trig functions. Andrew was asked to find the ratios of the 3 trig functions given triangles. He used the acronym SOHCAHTOA to set up the ratios. Then we used those ratios to find the angles that correspond to triangles. We also practiced using our calculator and inverse functions to find the angle measure given its sine, cosine, or tangent value.
Matthew was concerned about the accommodations that he was supposed to receive for his ACT exam. He had to call the college board to receive help. It turns out he was too late in applying for accommodations to receive them on his April exam. He worked with a representative to find out what he has to do next time to ensure this doesn't happen again. He changed his test date to June and will have the accommodations for that exam date.
Today Aiden and I worked on solving multi-step equations with fractions involved. We started with 2 terms in the equation, and then practiced with 3 and 4 terms. Aiden first found the LCM and used it to multiple both sides of the equation by it to rid the equations of fractions. Aiden asked why we were able to do it and if the equations were the same. I explained that we are able to manipulate the equation as long as we do the same operations to both sides of the equation. I explained they are not the same equation but they will yield the same results (like 2x=6 and 3x=9). Aiden did an excellent job of using inverse operations to solve for the given variable.
Today I subbed for Ben (my student Carson was absent). Mr. Dan had us watch a YouTube video on Organic Chemistry. Afterwards we discussed what we watched. He explained to me that in order for something to be organic it must contain carbon. So Organic chemistry includes objects which have carbon in them.
Ben had a good class today. We began by listening to two of his favorite songs. Then he was ready to begin. We discussed the relationship between exponents and radicals. We started with 4^2=16. I showed him how radicals and exponents are operations that undo each other. So the SquareRoot(16)=4. We practiced with more similar problems. Ben asked good questions to clarify his understanding.
Today JPaul and I discussed how to find the distance around a portion of a circle. We used the circumference formula C=2PiR to derive the formula for the arc length s=R(theta). We were given the radius of a circle and the angle measure and we used the formula to find the length of the intersected arc. JPaul found these problems to be easy. It became a bit more challenging when the angle measure was given in degrees. JPaul first changed it into radians, and then was able to apply the formula.
