Patrick practiced his words that end in sp and st by playing Hangman Jr. He looked up at the board to select his mystery word. I noticed that he was often off by a letter or two. Ex: The word was 5 letters, but he put out 4 spelling blocks, etc. This happened twice. He learned that author's write to persuade, inform, and entertain. As a fun way to recall the author's purpose vocabulary, he memorized the phrase and acronym: Author's love to eat P.I.E. We read an excerpt from Incredible Animals to reinforce the understanding of what informative writing looks and sounds like. We read a selection on alligators, learning unique facts about the animals. Following the reading, Patrick recalled numerous information he learned from reading an informative writing piece. Ex: The alligator keeps its mouth open to allow air to circulate throughout its mouth, cooling it off. It also holds its young in its mouth in the same position, protecting it from predators. He looked through the library and selected books that the author's purpose was to entertain or inform.

Patrick completed lesson 4.2; drawing a model to subtract. Following the activity, we created our own scenarios on the board using themes of his choice; dog bones, new puppies, etc.

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Patrick completed Lesson 4.5 where he learned to compare numbers to determine how many fewer the given person had, or how many more. The term fewer seemed difficult for him at first. So a scaffolding approach was necessary. He identified which model showed fewer and then was able to determine how many fewer by having less information to break down and process.

Patrick's daily calendar activities consist of skip counting by 5's and 10's. This week we added skip counting by 2's. He learned the jingle "2, 4, 6, 8, who do we appreciate? 0! 0! Goo zero!" This helped him see the pattern of the ones place having a 2, 4, 6, 8, and then it's time to move onto the next set of ten with the same numbers in the ones place. We continued charting counting by 2's all the way up to 50. Over the next couple weeks, I would like to see him able to verbalize them without having a chart to assist. But, he picked up on this new concept well. Patrick took contraction cars containing he, she, there, that, it, and crashed them with -is to create a contraction. It was difficult for him to pronounce the words that contained -ts. He often resorted back to -st which wouldn't make sense in that context. The reversal of the letters and sounds were the only barrier in grasping this skill. H As an assessment, I announced two words, and he wrote them on the board in the form of a contraction, being responsible for spelling the sight word (first part of the contraction) correctly, eliminating the vowel, and replacing it with an apostrophe in the correct position. He earned 6/6. Patrick is learning about the stages of the writing process and we are charting his progress of his current writing piece as he goes. He took his prewriting stage where he sketched his ideas about his protective dog and began drafting them today. He read and re-read Level B: What has this Tail? and took the comprehension quiz which was based on the main idea, comparing animals, and adjectives. He earned 5/5.

Patrick reviewed ch. 4 for his math test. We worked on 2 or 3 of each kind of problem he learned in this chapter; using addition to subtract, comparing groups, finding the missing part based on the whole and a part provided, finding how many fewer and more. He did awesome today in Math and seems ready.

Patrick did both steps today of V/V. He completed a Picture to Picture and Word Imagery. In his keyboarding lesson he continued on Level 4, Stage 10. In this step he is learning letters z and x, and practicing the ones he's learned up to this point. Patrick continued in his FF program. You should receive his weekly progress report on Saturdays.

Patrick spelled and read nonsense words with 2 letter blends. He wrote sentences using words with 2 letter blends.

Patrick practiced reviewing his sight words and learned three new ones; should, would, could. He practiced crashing ten particular sight word cars with a "not," word car to create "crashing contractions." (are, is, can, do, does, would, could, should, was, were) Patrick practiced pronouncing the n't sound after reading the first words. He used the two words in a verbal sentence , followed by using the contraction in the same verbal sentence to show the meaning is the same. As an assessment, I announced two words to Patrick, and he was responsible for writing them down correctly in the form of a contraction in which he did so 7/10 times. Patrick read and re-read two, level B books and took comprehension quizzes based on the main idea, details, possessive nouns, and author's purpose. During reading, I notice Patrick's major errors are due to making an assumption to words, based on having a strong "makes sense" ability. I'm continuously noticing a lot of b and d reversals, as well as interchanging the beginning or ending blends during reading.

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