Michael had done the reading for today but his notes were not enough to help him remember what he read. He only wrote down the most basic ideas which did not help him when he tried to recall the material. We had a good conversation about beliefs and how they shape our world (as tied into the documentary we watched), and only discussed the first essay after that. I spent time going over how to take notes and how to identify the important information to remember.

Michael struggled with algebraic expressions. He understood the concept of variable but had trouble writing the expressions. He said that he had trouble with this in the past and never understood. I told him that we will just keep working on it.

We finished watching the documentary and I was pretty pleased with the discussion that followed. Michael did much better remembering the details than he did for Inherit The Wind. He not only followed the overall theme of the movie, but he could also talk about specific examples. We're starting the book he was assigned to read and spent time talking about what he needs to do. I'm stressing that he needs to take notes on everything he reads, otherwise he has a hard time remembering.

Michael is having trouble remembering some of the processes for problem solving. I am trying to help him understand we use certain processes so that he will be more likely to remember them. He gets better with practice but sometimes relies too much on me to help him when I'm there (though he often knows how to solve the problem on his own).

Michael has trouble processing ideas and formulating opinions. After reading and watching Inherit the Wind, he still had trouble with both the details and the major themes of the play. His typical response is "I have no opinion of that". I decided to go a different route from literature and watch a documentary about religion to see how well he processed the information. We stopped periodically to discuss the film, and again, he seemed to be following it very well, but all of his energy seems to go toward remembering rather than processing. He can tell you what just happened but has a lot of trouble connecting that to the larger message of the documentary. I'm curious to see how much of it he remembers for our discussion on Monday.

Excellent reception, eager to learn and please. Short term memory recall seems difficult.

I covered subtracting mixed numbers a few weeks ago and Michael practiced it, but I noticed that when I put the different concepts into one assignment, he consistently struggled with subtracting mixed numbers more than anything. The best way to remember math is to practice it (over and over) so I gave reviewed and gave him more practice.

Michael definitely has a better understanding of the play after watching the movie, but his ability to draw ideas and opinions from the text needs work. Whenever I ask for his opinion about topics, his typical answer is "I don't have an opinion of that". Obviously, this is exactly what I'm trying to work with him on. He hasn't thought about many topics up to this point, which is something he needs to start doing. He's very weak when it comes to remembering details, which is something we'll continue to work on.