Michael did a very good job in our grammar review

Michael did some research about community events for his school paper article. There was some confusion about his assignment as he thought he was writing about current events (i.e. news), and wasn't exactly excited about his assignment. He found one web page of community events, but really didn't have much of a concept about what would be appropriate material. He wanted to write about bands/dance nights in bars, which I said wouldn't be good for this purpose. We found information on the Green Market that's starting downtown, and wrote a paragraph about that. Writing is very difficult for him, and he in essence, just copied the text he found online. We'll continue to work on it.

Michael is doing well. Today he worked on problems with more steps and problems with negative numbers.

Michael is doing well. He really improved from yesterday to today and said that he liked the way that I taught the concept (compared to the way that he learned in England).

I had Brandon for two sessions today as I substituted one class for Liz. Michael had not done the reading for today, so we just picked up where we left off in class. Reading is a very serious obstacle for him. He has a lot of trouble with vocabulary and actually understanding what he reads. An example of this is from an essay we read by Warren Christopher in which he compared two cars passing in the night, to the way people interact with each other in the world. In essence, he says that we all rely on each other to not cross into our lane and kill us. But when I asked Michael, what he meant when he said he caught the others drivers eye, Michael's response was that he was wondering if the other driver was the same age. He completely missed the point of the essay. Once the material is explained to him, he gets it pretty quickly and can engage in conversation about it. But more and more I'm realizing that he needs the material explained to him or he just doesn't get it. I understand now that the reason he's not taking good notes is that he simply doesn't understand the material.

Michael did the reading while I was gone, but he didn't take any notes of what he read. We went over a technique that I think will work well for him, but he's still having trouble finding the meaning of the essays and more importantly, remembering the details of what he's read.

Michael had trouble with a few of the problems on his assignment from yesterday. I went over some of them with him and will go over the rest tomorrow.

Michael seemed very tired during the last 15 minutes of class.

I enjoyed meeting and working with Michael - he did a good job. Sub for Liz