We finally finished the play and I'm not really sure how much Michael has gotten out of it. On the bright side, reading this has given me a great deal of insight into his strengths and weaknesses, and what we need to work on with the rest of our time together. We are going to watch the movie next week and I'll be very curious to see how much more he picks up than from the reading.

Michael is clearly having trouble with reading the play. Despite our conversations, he still has a great deal of difficulty remembering what we discussed the day before. I often feel like each day we basically have to start over. We had a good discussion about the interacting between Drummond and Brady, we'll see how well he remembers it tomorrow.

Michael seemed a bit tired in class today, and almost feel asleep several times during our session.

I decided to take a break from operations on mixed numbers today. Michael did well changing fractions to decimals and percents.

Michael is improving everyday, but he still has trouble putting the concepts together. Today he copied a chart that should help him.

Very cooperative. I intend to use a combination of traditional materials and Wilson.

Michael didn't know where to start with writing the introduction, so we began by brainstorming and outlining his essay. We reviewed his outline, dropping one idea that didn't belong, combining two ideas into one paragraph, and reordering the paragraphs into logical order. Next, we talked about how to create a thesis using a topic plus a controlling idea. Michael had some trouble wording the main idea of his essay into one sentence, so I had him begin writing about the topic at hand in general, forming a funneled introduction. He was able to do so, but remained stuck on the thesis. He was able to piece together his thoughts verbally, but got stuck when writing it. As the class was winding down, I decided not to rush him and instead to have him finish his thesis statement at home (as he was able to complete the rest of the introduction in class).

Michael is getting better at operations with fractions. Today we moved on to division, but his homework still included multiplying, adding and subtracting because he needs to work on putting multiple concepts together.

Michael did work on the character analysis paragraphs, but rather than writing paragraphs (which I stressed), he only wrote 1-2 lines with the most basic of information. He at least now knows the characters by name, but he's not paying attention the the underlying themes of the play and information they give us about the characters. In short, his analysis and understanding of the play is way too simplistic. We continued reading today and are now into the courtroom confrontation between Brady and Drummond. In discussions, it seems like he's understanding and interested in the play, but it rarely carries over to the next day, when it seems like we almost have to start from scratch. We took the last 15 minutes of class to discuss which "theme" he wants to focus on at Mitchell, and he's definitely interested the the Crime Scene Investigation classes.