Dylan did a great job reading this book, and am very impressed with his understanding and retention. We had a great discussion about the larger themes of the book, and compared those themes to other works of literature. I think Dylan got a lot out of this exercise.
Dylan and I had a great conversation about the duality of man and the how that theme plays out in the book. He's done a great job with the reading, and I was very pleased with the way he uses the lesson of the book to talk about the bigger ideas and themes. Excellent work!
read/discuss Lord of the Flies
write about 'the beast"
Dylan continues to do a good job with Lord of the Flies. He had a little trouble with the writing, but only because it was a little different than what's he's used to. But he didn't waver and gave an excellent effort. I'm very pleased with his work on this book so far.
Dylan is doing a great job with this book. His attention to characters, plot and setting is excellent, and he's doing a great job with the bigger themes of the book. I'm very pleased with his effort.
I was really impressed by how well Dylan read and remembered the two chapters from our last session three weeks ago. He was a little fuzzy, but overall had a solid understanding of the characters and story.
I decided to move on from short stories and start working with Dylan on a novel. We're going to read Lord of the Flies together and work on analysis and writing based on that. We read most of the 1st chapter, stopping to discuss setting/plot/characters. Dylan did a very good job.
We spent today working on a basic 5 paragraph essay. I chose Sleepy Hollow as a topic as it is currently Dylan's favorite show. We went over the basic outline and how to do the prewriting. Dylan had a little trouble coming up with ideas, but his thesis and topic sentences were solid. He wrote 4 paragraphs, all of which were very solid.
I had planned on working writing today, but changed that after talking with Dylan and his mom. He's going to start using a computer in school, and his mom wants him to work on his typing. I showed him the typing games he can use, and we went over "home row" and practiced a bit. Dylan has had some trouble identifying parts of speech, so we spent the rest of the hour going over that.
Read "Most Dangerous Game"
Write about details/work on retention
Dylan is really becoming a very strong reader, and his attention and retention of details is improving as well. I think his biggest obstacle is organizing the information. Today we read a short story and we stopped every couple of pages and I gave him a topic to write a paragraph. He did very well at that and noticed details that I didn't expect. Good job!
Dylan brought in all his materials from his English class, and it sounds like his teacher is really on top of his situation. He has been reading the books I recommended, and has already read 4 of the 12 books in the series. His understanding and retention of the books is pretty solid and we had a good discussion about the characters and themes of the books. (The Dresden Files) Today I wanted to get a sense of where is comprehension is in a test form, so I had him do the reading comprehension for his age group from the SSAT. He completed the test in less than the allotted time and only missed 4 questions. I was very pleased with his effort. Additionally, he has been building his catalog of vocabulary flashcards steadily for the last three weeks. Great effort!
