We talked about the Western Powers - Iranian nuclear discussions and the complicating factors - Western sanctions on Iran, Iran's determination to succeed with nuclear technology, Netanyahu's address to both houses of Congress and the open letter to Iran signed by 47 U.S. Senators.
Assignment
None.
Session Minutes
60
Minutes Student Attended
50
Lesson Comments
Discussions were lively, stimulating and fun. I think Cal started with a clean slate and learned quite a bit.
Cal and I worked today on understanding slope, y-intercept, and x-intercepts in more detail. We used both formulas relating points on a plot to find slope of lines and ways to understand and unveil important information for a linear equation. We used the rise over run formula in particular to find slope and to plot lines in point-slope formula and slope-intercept formula. Cal work through a number of practice test problems at the end of chapter 6 in the Algebra 1 textbook.
Cal is not practicing anything we are learning in the sessions and has not done anything with regard to re-writing his essay in the last ten days. So, I'm very frustrated. I decided to have him watch a couple videos today as a change of pace and this worked to an extent, but he needs to put some time in on his own to make our sessions more worthwhile.
We discussed the movement US "Heavy Armor" into the Baltic states. We followed that with a discussion of who the Baltic State are (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia) and their history with Russia and the USSR and their Russian populations (approx 30 %). We went on to discuss the upcoming U.S. Presidential elections.
Assignment
None.
Session Minutes
60
Minutes Student Attended
60
Lesson Comments
Cal was very much engaged in our discussions. He is a little bit sketchy on the Baltic states (who isn't?) but I'm hopeful that we remedied that somewhat.
We discussed the notion of absolute value in general, after which Cal stepped to the white board where he worked problems for the rest of the session. We started with equations including absolute value and then went on to simple and complex inequalities.
Assignment
None.
Session Minutes
60
Minutes Student Attended
60
Lesson Comments
Cal worked hard and extensively. He seemed to grasp all concepts quickly.
Cal and I worked through some problems of linear algebra. We discussed the properties of the dependent variable (Y) and the independent variable (x) and how these two variables can be used to plot a straight line with constant slope (m). In addition, Cal and I worked on putting linear equations into slope-intercept form (y=mx+b) and deterred ways to use the slope and y-intercept (b) from this equation. We also talked about the x-intercept for a line and cases where a line would have a slope of zero or a slope of infinity.
Assignment
none
Session Minutes
60
Minutes Student Attended
60
Lesson Comments
Cal was both attentive and respectful during the entire session time.
We began by reviewing the essay on movie writing written by Cal, but we quickly detoured into a review of punctuation as well since it was apparent that Cal's work did not reflect what we have been studying.
Assignment
Rewrite Essay
Session Minutes
60
Minutes Student Attended
60
Lesson Comments
Cal is rarely practicing at home what we're learning. Thus, his progress is very slow. This is especially true after he misses sessions due to illness, which is frequently the case.
