After some keyboarding exercises, Jackson used the tools in MS Word to create an outline. He began typing the outline for his research project, using traditional outlining format.
As we get close to finishing the story, Flowers for Algernon, Jackson completed a study guide review with questions from the earlier part of the book. The final fifteen minutes of class were spent reading the story. Jackson's homework is to read the next entry.
The first part of class was spent reviewing key terminology regarding research papers, including what it means to plagiarize and the differences between direct quotations, indirect quotations, and paraphrase. Jackson then selected four sources he will use for his research and put together his outline.
Jackson continued to read Flowers for Algernon and has reached the point where both Charlie and Algernon rapidly decline. We discussed what Charlie discovered in his research about the experiment done on him and why it wouldn't be successful in the end. We also talked about how Charlie's loneliness may have been an outcome of the operation because the experiment only took into consideration his intelligence and not his emotional development.
We spent the entire session uploading Jackson's short story, "Fishing Surprise," from Jackson's notebook to a computer.
Assignment
None.
Session Minutes
60
Minutes Student Attended
60
Lesson Comments
Jackson worked really hard in downloading his story to the computer. I'm sure that he learned that it's much easier to copy from handwritten text when it is double-spaced as opposed to single-spaced. We had an excellent session.
Jackson is in the final stages related to completing the research assignment. He is working on paraphrasing information and citing sources he used for both content and visuals. He still needs to reorganize his story board so that flows in a logical and sequential way.
Session Minutes
60
Minutes Student Attended
60
Lesson Comments
A very slow process. The research assignment has taken several weeks beyond my original timeline to complete the assignment. Jackson's did well finding visuals, but his ability to connect content is lacking. Also, citing sources and paraphrasing information, although not easy, doesn't seem to be important to him. I have cut some items out of the assignment in order to wrap it up ASAP.
