Today we focused on setting up and punctuating a letter, but I was more concerned with what Clay wrote, rather than how he wrote it. We did two worksheets on proofreading a letter, and then I had him write a letter to a friend up north. Clay's writing is definitely improving, but he still has trouble thinking of things to write. However, he did craft two very solid paragraphs, with good topic sentences and complete ideas.
Finish typing final copy of "If I Were Principal for a Week" - Will made a few word changes, needed to capitalize a couple of words before printing. The finished product looked great. Will did a really good job with this!
Proofread documents. Al came in with the new document, which we went over. I've noticed much fewer mistakes with tense and sentence structure, but his new tendency is to put too many commas into the text. We went through the major rules he needs to worry about and he seemed to pick it with little problem.
Session Minutes
60
Minutes Student Attended
60
Lesson Comments
Al came in with the new document, which we went over. I've noticed much fewer mistakes with tense and sentence structure, but his new tendency is to put too many commas into the text. We went through the major rules he needs to worry about and he seemed to pick it with little problem.
Will finished the rough draft of his paper "If I Were Principal for a Week" and today we proofread/made corrections. Then he began typing his final copy (will have to finish later). He did a good job and I think he likes to type his paper(s). They look so nice and neat!
Review complete predicate, writing/punctuating a letter. Clay did a great job with the worksheet on simple and complete predicates, and did well with editing the letters we looked at. However, when I asked him to write a letter to a friend, he had a very hard time coming up with things to say. Even with prompts, he'd stare off into a space for a bit and then come back with "I don't know." We had a good talk about eliminating that phrase from his vocabulary and in the end, he wrote a pretty decent letter.
Session Minutes
45
Minutes Student Attended
45
Lesson Comments
Clay did a great job with the worksheet on simple and complete predicates, and did well with editing the letters we looked at. However, when I asked him to write a letter to a friend, he had a very hard time coming up with things to say. Even with prompts, he'd stare off into a space for a bit and then come back with "I don't know." We had a good talk about eliminating that phrase from his vocabulary and in the end, he wrote a pretty decent letter.
sentence structure/flow of ideas. We started of talking about Clay's trip to Tallahassee, focusing on descriptive statements. I then had Clay write ten chronological sentences with two nouns and verbs each. We then broke each sentence down into subjects and predicates and identified all nouns and verbs. This was a very advantageous exercise for Clay as it clearly showed how little detail he puts into the subject of his sentences.
Session Minutes
45
Minutes Student Attended
45
Lesson Comments
We started of talking about Clay's trip to Tallahassee, focusing on descriptive statements. I then had Clay write ten chronological sentences with two nouns and verbs each. We then broke each sentence down into subjects and predicates and identified all nouns and verbs. This was a very advantageous exercise for Clay as it clearly showed how little detail he puts into the subject of his sentences.
Al's writing has improved a great deal, and our proofreading sessions are growing more minimal. He still needs to work on some sentence structure issues and start using articles, but the progress is apparent.
We started off going over direct and indirect objects. Clay was unclear about them so I explained and worked on his worksheet with him. I then had him write 10 sentences about skimboarding, which he did with very little trouble. When we started it took him a while to write the sentences, today he whipped them out pretty quickly. Before we move on to more complex grammar, I wanted to make sure he was clear on the material we've already covered, so we did a review of subjects and predicates. He had no problems with the exercises at all.
review types of sentences
punctuation for types of sentences
practice exercises
Assignment
none
Session Minutes
45
Minutes Student Attended
45
Lesson Comments
I started the session with our typical Monday review of the weekend. I've noticed Clay has gotten much better at talking about his weekend and giving full details without me prompting him. This is a positive step. We then reviewed the types of sentences, which Clay had a little trouble remembering. But once we went over it, it all came back to him. He did a great job on the practice exercises, especially when I gave him an un-capitialized and un-punctuated paragraph. He had very little trouble identifying the sentences and giving the proper punctuation.
Al seemed very stressed out today, but his writing has definitely improved. He's gotten much more direct and concise, and is making far fewer mistakes with tense. His new thing is dropping his articles. I stressed that was not the way to be more concise. "A" and "the" are two pretty important words.
