I edited Cal's five-paragraph essay and went over the corrections line by line. I think we made some progress.
Assignment
Continue to Polish Essay Based Upon Today's Session
Session Minutes
60
Minutes Student Attended
42
Lesson Comments
We began with Cal showing up 18 minutes late and then taking a 12-minute bathroom break....so...this was a bit nerve wracking, but I acted as if it was normal. Cal actually paid better attention to what was said, but there is enormous room for improvement. We'll soon see if he truly internalized what we went over today with regard to writing tips. Cal admitted that he spent a total of 15 minutes on it over a period of 8 days.
I followed a description in the text of natural numbers, whole numbers, integers, rational numbers, irrational numbers and the real numbers. We went beyond the real numbers and discussed imaginary numbers and complex numbers briefly. Then we did a sidebar economic analysis of prices/wages in 1950 vs 2014.
Assignment
None.
Session Minutes
60
Minutes Student Attended
60
Lesson Comments
Cal was quite intrigued about our discussion of imaginary numbers ( i= square root of -1). In our sidebar discussion, he was able to infer from the data that $1.00 in 1950 would be about $12.00 today. Hence the 1950 minimum wage of $1 per hour is roughly equivalent to $12.00 per hour today (compared to $7.25).
Literary Elements/Punctuation (Commas and Quotation Marks)
Lesson Outline
We discussed several literary elements: allegory, allusion, amplification, analogy, anecdote and antithesis. I also "sprinkled" in some lessons in punctuation by discussing the proper usage of quotation marks and commas.
Assignment
Continue to Work on the Five-Paragraph Essay Due 5pm Sunday
Session Minutes
60
Minutes Student Attended
60
Lesson Comments
Cal could hardly keep still today and had little interest in the subject. He also took his usual 12-minute bathroom break. No idea what to expect with his essay this weekend.
We worked through a section in Chapter 1 of the text where we studies tabulated data, assigned variables to represent the data and expressed the relationship between the two variables as an equation. Then we tested our equation using the data in the table.
Assignment
None.
Session Minutes
60
Minutes Student Attended
60
Lesson Comments
Today was our first day in Algebra 1. Cal responded well.
We studied the structural components of the short story in the context of the Freytag model. In addition, we took a detour and discussed the specific rules pertaining to the use of quotation marks.
Assignment
Study the Emailed Docs/Write 9 sentences Using Punctuation as Suggested
Session Minutes
60
Minutes Student Attended
60
Lesson Comments
Cal arrived late today, began our sessions with a 14-minute trip to the bathroom and couldn't hardly pay attention when we were together. So, this was quite frustrating. I did speak briefly with his mother, who did not know that Cal had been given an assignment that was due the previous Friday. Interestingly, Cal used the excuse that he thought he was switching tutors as for why he didn't do the assignment! The good news is that his mother pledged to support me wholeheartedly.
We spent the session working practice problems, both teacher-generated and from the text. It took several practice problems for Cal to get used to handle negative signs in the inequality but by the time we finished, he had it mastered.
Assignment
None.
Session Minutes
60
Minutes Student Attended
60
Lesson Comments
I continue to believe that Cal is indeed ready for Algebra 1.
We solved several inequalities, using addition, subtraction and multiplication.
Assignment
None.
Session Minutes
60
Minutes Student Attended
60
Lesson Comments
I am convinced that Cal is ready for algebra 1. I'm not sure what the best approach would be at this point, but he certainly isn't being challenged by the pre-algebra material (which isn't all that different from algebra 1.)
We discussed the various types of essays and the different ways a writer can get his ideas across to the reader. We also discussed the three basic uses of the semi-colon.
Assignment
Continue to Work on the Five-Paragraph Essay Due Friday
Session Minutes
50
Minutes Student Attended
50
Lesson Comments
Cal was more positive today, paid more attention and didn't require a bathroom break! Those were all minor victories. However, I asked Cal how he was doing on the essay assigned last Friday, and his response was: "what essay"? I said the essay that we discussed and which he had written down the guidelines for and placed in his folder. His "memory" returned, and the guidelines were in his folder, but it was disappointing that he had not done a shred of work on his assignment.
We began by solving simple addition equations and then moved to subtraction, multiplication and division equations. After Cal demonstrated that he could solve them all in his head, we went on to simple inequalities and worded several practice problems from the text.
We examined numbers from the media about the spread of the ebola virus. I had Cal tabulate the projected growth of the number of cases of cases and then graph the numbers, showing exponential growth (where the growth rate increases over time.)
Assignment
None.
Session Minutes
60
Minutes Student Attended
60
Lesson Comments
We jumped out of the textbook to tackle a real-world application of algebra. Cal seemed genuinely interested in the issues of the ebola virus, its spread and how to stop it.
