With magnetic letters, Richard practiced his spelling words and words ending with ce. He played Roll and Read with CVVC words. He read books with words he can read.
Ben did not want to work today. He had legos on his desk.. I asked what he was making, he said, "I don't know." He had food on his desk, I asked him what it was, he said, "Food." I told him one day when he's not tired, he's happy, he feels good, I'm going to be the happiest teacher ever! He told me I'd never feel that way because he's in an ever-changing state of hormones and growth.
So I put on a metallica song and started writing exponent problems on his desk. He asked me about the song and we started talking about it. Then I pointed to the (8x)^0 on his desk and asked him what it equaled. He answered 0. I reminded him that anything to the 0 power is always 1. He asked why. I said I don't know, we should watch a video about it tomorrow. He started to open up a bit more. I was able to ask him a few more exponent problems.
Today Aiden and I began by having a conversation about his note-taking in a different class. Aiden has been feeling overwhelmed lately because he has realized he hasn't taken notes the first half of the year the way he wishes he had. He feels this is important because he thinks he has forgotten a lot of material and needs the notes to refer to. I told Aiden he is putting unrealistic expectations on himself. It's humanly impossible to remember every fact from every subject from every day. I told Aiden he is right where he needs to be in his development, both mathematically and just as a student. I felt fortunate he was able to confide in me and I'm hoping our conversation made him feel a little bit better.
Aiden preferred to finish our 5.2 activity instead of continuing onto 5.3. I was ok with that because I want him to continue with this content with confidence, and he has been doing excellently! Tomorrow we will move onto 5.3.
Austin explained that he wrote a lot in class today and was offered help developing his story. He was reminded that one of the main goals is to capture the reader's interest right at the onset of the essay and to whet his appetite and get him to want more. Austin requested to read more chapters in the novel by Louis Sachar. He demonstrated excellent attention to detail, listening skills and expertly explained the changed dynamic between the protagonist and supporting characters. As Austin reads regularly, he is exposed to a rich tapestry of vocabulary, sentence structures, and storytelling techniques. Furthermore, this exposure is like a toolbox for writers as it enriches one's vocabulary repertoire, gives more words to use, different ways to construct sentences, and a better understanding of how stories can be told. The reading component also helps one find one's preferred style of writing. In simple words, sometimes one's genres of the novel become favorite writing styles. Austin was queried about vocabulary and did a good job explaining them in his own words. I will share an idea I have which will combine his love of drawing with writing skills at our session next week.
Today PJ and I started on the topic of solving equations using inverse operations. We went outside and used chalk on the tennis court. I wrote out problems like x+1=5 and asked PJ to guess what the value of x is. He answered 4 and I asked him to explain to me why. Then I showed him how to do the problem by doing inverse operations. I asked him "What is the opposite of addition?" He answered subtraction. I showed him that if we subtract 1 on both sides, it would cancel on the left side and we could simplify the 5-1 to 4. We practiced a few of those problem types together.
Lively had a great session. It was a smoother transition today. We worked on s-blends, s, and L today.
S-blends with cues 75% accuracy
S with cues 80% accuracy
L with cues 75% accuracy
Today Andrew and I almost finished the test review. Andrew had a lot of difficulty with it. He doesn't seem to fully understand the theorems/concepts we have been working on. Today he asked me some pretty basic questions that made me realize he needs more foundational review. So we spent time working through the problems, reviewing the vocabulary, and practicing setting up equations to solve for the missing variable. We will spend more time reviewing before I give him a test.
