Today Ben and I worked on an exponent scavenger hunt. The answer to one problem led us to the next problem. Ben was slow to start, but he was eventually willing to do some work. We covered multiplying, dividing, power rule, and negative exponents. Ben becomes intimidated when he sees a lot of problems/numbers on the page. He always protests at first. I tried covering up the problems for him but he said that wouldn't be helpful since his brain already saw the other numbers on the page. He continued to push through though.
Pierce and Quinn were early; I played a round of Phonics Dice until Dorothy was ready for Quinn. Pierce and I continued to co-read "Who Was Dr. Suess?" Pierce learned about the author's first children's book, "To Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street." Although the text seems simple, Dr. Suess often wrote up to 500 drafts per page! Next, we read one of Pierce's favorite Dr. Suess's books, "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish" and observed the text taught counting, colors, rhyming, and emotions. Pierce and I agreed that the book was really a long poem, with one verse that repeats throughout, "From here to there, funny things are everywhere." With that rhyming couplet as a writing prompt, we brainstormed ideas for a poem. Pierce's ideas included: blue fish, singing annoying music, going into people's houses screaming. From these disparate phrases emerged the beginnings of a poem. We will finish writing and illustrate the poem next session.
Richard was seen in his room for a 45-minute treatment session. His session focuses on improving his postural control, integration of retained reflexes, visual motor skills and integration, fine motor skills, dexterity, manipulation, ocular motor development and graphomotor development/keyboarding as an alternative means to written communication. The beginning of our session was spent at a Black History Month school assmebly in which Richard presented about a chef. Once back in his room we continued working on Script Island and he was instructed on the lowercase letter "k". He wrote it well after practicing it large with auditory cues. He reviewed all previously learned letters from this group which consisted of letters "e,l, h and b". He also was able to connect previously learned letters to write his mom's name in script - kira. All letters in lowercase at this time. Great session.
Richard was seen in his room for a 45-minute treatment session. His session focuses on improving his postural control, integration of retained reflexes, visual motor skills and integration, fine motor skills, dexterity, manipulation, ocular motor development and graphomotor development/keyboarding as an alternative means to written communication. Began treatment with reviewing "The Monkeys Eat at the Island Grill" group. Richard was instructed on lowercase letter "b"and wrote the letter well in cursive. He was able to connect previous learned letters to create words in cursive with moderate to max. verbal cues provided. He wrote words such as "bill, bit, bye, and boo". Richard does best when he is given small breaks because at times this type of work can be difficult and frustrating form him. Next, we worked on Ann Arbor tracking program to work on his visual pursuits and saccades. For the first sentence he tracked in jumbles paragraph it took 35 seconds to find 10 words after three attempts (he asked to start over three times). His second sentence it took him 37 seconds to find 8 words with only one attempt. Good session with hard work.
Assignment
Continue to practice writing in script whenever possible.
Today Andrew and I started a new chapter. We first started with the vocabulary of a triangle: leg, hypotenuse, right angle, opposite. Then we identified various triangles by parts. Then I introduced to Andrew the Pythagorean Theorem. We discussed how "c" is always the hypotenuse and "a" and "b" can be in any order. We practiced using the theorem to determine if 3 side lengths could represent a right triangle. Then we were given two sides of a triangle and asked to find the third side. Andrew needs more practice with solving the equation. But he is doing a good job setting it up.
Today Carson and I worked on some application of the Pythagorean Theorem. We worked with rectangular prisms, and used the given sides to find the diagonal length. Then we used those lengths to find the missing sides. Some of these problems were challenging. Carson did a great job reasoning.
Today Matthew and I reviewed how to convert degrees to radians and radians to degrees. I realized Matthew was just memorizing the process but he didn't quite understand WHY we use the proportions we did to convert. So I drew a visual aid on the white board to help him see it. Then we discussed coterminal angles, as different ways to measure the same angle. We practiced finding how to get to a given location in both degrees and radians, as well as positive and negative directions. This requires some creative and out of the box thinking. Matthew did a great job. He still needs some practice, but he's on the right track.
