Maya read stories outside of Wilson. Worked on transferring skills to outside reading. Maya did a wonderful job today.

It was so nice to see Maya after being out sick. She did a great job today. In LB, Maya worked on Lesson 14 in her workbook. She read a story entitled, "The Hungry Bear". Maya engaged in answering questions which support her ability to visualize the story. She identified the gestalt, and sketched a picture of a part of the story that she was able to visualize. In math class, Maya worked on lesson 9-8, Problem Solving. She used manipulatives, such as coins to solve problems. We reviewed strategies of problems solving like drawing a picture, acting it out, and reasoning. Problem solving is a little more difficult for Maya, and requires understanding more abstract ideas. This lesson comes as additional practice at the end of each topic. In FF, Maya played three different braingames. She was not very focused for the first game, but improved with time. She was able to beat her highest score in Magic Bird. This game addresses spelling, phonemic awareness, and letter-sound correspondence.

Identify what makes up an ecosystem. Describe how living things meet their needs in habitats. Identify habitats in an ecosystem. Discuss and define ( with four examples) ecosystem, community, population, and habitat. Review nonliving and living things in an ecosystem. Discuss: the banks, the water's edge, shallow water, and deep water. Define wetlands (marshes, swamps)

Worked on differentiating between closed syllables and v-e syllables. Maya still needs a little work on this concept, but she is getting it.

Maya began our session very motivated to work today! She immediately wanted to discuss verbs and nouns. She took the initiative and started listing nouns and verbs on her whiteboard and then used them to make sentences. She wrote 5 sentences using the nouns and verbs from her generated list. Then we completed "Max's Book of Verbs". Maya wrote sentences describing the picture and then labeled the common and proper nouns and verbs in the picture. She was very successful with her parts of speech. Lastly, she read her book aloud to Miss Debbie.

Discuss the illustrations on page B8 and B9,habitats and population in a pond ecosystem. Finish the poster containing a pond ecosystem habitats and populations.

We only had 30 minutes today, as Maya was leaving school early to go home with Anna and Quinn. We took a short trip to the exercise track and playground. There were some young men doing strength training on the bars, and they seemed to really inspire Maya. She did several pull-ups and chin-ups on the bar, and worked on the parallel bars. We talked about how training and practice helped us build muscles, strength, and endurance. I gave Maya a "yoga monkey" stuffed animal (early for V-day).

Punctuation and word sounds: Maya did a very good job finding the correct punctuation for sentences and matching word sounds. She worked hard and was very respectful.

Today Maya and I began with rereading Level I "Winter Vacation". Maya read the entire book independently. She was much more focused on reading for meaning today. She self-corrected or asked for guidance when she came to an unknown word. Then she took a comprehension test on the story and scored a 7/8. She wanted to correct the mistake and was 100% successful the second time around. Then I read a chapter of the Magic Treehouse. Maya made predictions and connections throughout the read aloud. Maya was very interested in the Hawaiian people so we did a little research after the chapter. She had made the prediction that Hawaiian people lived in teepees and was very proud of herself when we learned that they lived in huts! Excellent connections to social studies content. Lastly, we reviewed verbs and began a verb book about my cat Max.

Maya is continuing to work on reading and spelling words with the v-e syllable type. She is starting to get the hang of it.