We read a new short story today, and I continue to be impressed with Dylan's comprehension and retention. If he just slowed down his reading a bit, I think he would be able to get even more out of it. We finished the story and had a great conversation about the morality of the finish.
Today we read the short story, The Monkey's Paw. Dylan had read a book of poems based on the short story, but had never read the original story itself. We spent some time talking about the concept of fate, and the purpose behind the curse. As usual, his reading was excellent, but the real reason I chose this story was to ascertain how often he looks up words he doesn't know. There was a lot of choice vocabulary in the story, and Dylan has a tendency to assume he knows a the meaning of a word based on its context. He needs to make more of an effort to keep building his vocabulary when reading.
Dylan brought in the lyrics to his two favorite songs. We went through each and analyzed them based on what they meant to Dylan. He did a great job with each, and put a lot of thought into the meaning. I then had him write about how his personality is reflected in each of the songs, and why they had such an impact on him. I was very pleased with his work.
Dylan didn't have anything to work on today, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to introduce poetry and song lyrics. We read two poems, talked about subjectivity vs objectivity, and came up with a couple of different interpretations for each. I then had Dylan pick his favorite song and we printed out and read the lyrics. We didn't have time to get into analysis, but will continue next week.
Dylan did a very good job with the essay today. He has a lot of trouble with starting a paper, so we spent a good deal of time focusing on pre-writing, topic sentences, and the thesis statement. In the past, he's had a tendency to change topics mid-paragraph, so we really focused on picking one topic, and then using the different examples to emphasize the point. He tends to think of the examples as the topic. On the whole, it was a productive session and I was very pleased with his effort and focus.
We started off talking about the short story we read last week. Again, Dylan impressed me with how well he remembered what we read. I think short stories are easier for him as there is less material to contend with, which is why I'm trying to get him to take notes after reading each chapter. To that end, we went through the most recent chapter he read and talked about how to take notes. He's very good at spotting the important information, and has excellent summarization skills. He did a great job and the process should help him in the future.
Discuss reading from this week/Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Lesson Outline
Discuss reading from this week
Read The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Dylan seems to be doing a good job with his reading in school, but needs to remember to make chapter notes after he reads each chapter. He's great at talking about what he reads, but this will help him pay better attention to details when it comes test time. We then read The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, but didn't have time to discuss it.
Dylan scored very well on his test on The Giver. We spent the session going back over the book and discussing some of the major themes. We had a big conversation about the ending and the possible interpretations. Dylan hadn't thought about it much and was really into the idea that they died. We then started working on his new book, and talked about understanding other cultures and the importance of that toward diversity.
Dylan had some trouble on his Call of the Wild test (which we never got the chance to discuss), so we went over the test and talked about different strategies he can use to help him better remember the details. He's going to start taking chapter notes on a separate piece of paper after reading each chapter, and will make flash cards whenever he gets a character list. We then went through the test, which was very difficult by the way. We talked about developing his answers more fully on his study guides, and then using them later.
We went over the short answers Dylan has already done, and talked about how to improve them. For somebody with such strong retention skills, Dylan can give much more detailed and fully developed answers.
