We finished Chapter 4 in its entirety and examined the character dynamics between the protagonist, his mother, teacher, and the newest character, the school counselor. This particular Sachar novel is a higher Lexile level than the others Nico is reading and requires a good measure of inferential reasoning skills. When afforded minimal prompts, Nico contributed astute observations about the personality traits and dynamics between charactrers.

Substitute Plans Provided for Reading Chapters 7 and 8 with Related Written Questions . Student will read 2 chapters of the provided fiction book and is required to write answers as required in the accompanying worksheet.

Saskiia completed her interactive calendar, wrote and read her spelling words, put together her daily sentence puzzle, finished her calendar talk and calendar writing, and worked on her phonics activities.

In our readings today, we discussed vocabulary. In particular we discussed the words, "pique" and "whet." When queried later in the session, Nico recalled their meaning of whet but got confused with pique, stating it's the top until I called his attention to the spelling and used it in context, We read another chapter in Louis Sachar's book, There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom, and Nico remembered the meaning of leit motif, but was helped to recall its name; however, he did remember it was a recurrent theme and identified it appropriately in the story. Nico also related a character to his father and noted the reasons why. I hope this book piques his interest and whets his appetite to read other books by Sachar.

Saskiia completed her Interactive Calendar, read and wrote her spelling words and sight words, put together her daily sentence puzzle, finished her calendar talk and calendar writing, wrote her days of the week, and read and discussed her Scholastic News Magazine about Jellyfish.

Soskiia completed her interactive calendar, worked on her phonics activities, finished her calendar talk and calendar writing activity, and read, wrote and practiced spelling her 10 spelling words.

We continued to read in Louis Sachar's novel, "There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom." The chapter held a lot of symbolism and required a rather sophisticated degree of inferential reasoning skills to analyze, and Nico was able to integrate the information effectively and make logical assumptions about the context. He also analyzed the character dynamics well, as the protagonist's sister was introduced in this third chapter in the book - along with a host of stuffed animals which the protagonist imaginatively uses as his admiring audience to boost his self esteem.

Saskiia completed her interactive calendar, wrote her spelling words, completed her phonics activities, put together her daily sentence puzzle, wrote her days of the week and months of the year, finished her calendar talk and calendar writing, and read her CVC words.

We continued to collaboratively read Louis Sachar's book, "There's A Boy in the Girls' Bathroom. Nico expressed an interest in the author, so we read a biography about him. I also suggested the book "Holes" as 'a summer reading novel, which won the Newberry Medal of excellence, after he finishes the authors books he's currently reading (Sideways Stories from Wayside School'). We examined the literary element known as 'leit motif,' used in literature, art, and music. In literature, I explained that leit motif is a repeated pattern, such as an image, sound, word, or symbol, that comes back over and over again within a particular story. We identified the phrase "last seat, last row" as an example and Nico raised his hand whenever that phrase was repeated in the book. Nico professes that he does not reading, so it's a bit challenging to spark his interest, but he demonstrates very good comprehension, synthesis and analysis of literary content - as well as recall and retrieval skills when queried. He did look up the book "Holes,' which may have somewhat whet his appetite to read as we read a short summary about it and it's also been made into a movie.

Saskiia completed her interactive calendar, read and wrote her spelling words, finished her calendar talk and calendar writing activities, worked on her phonics activities, matched rhyming words, and put together her daily sentence puzzle.