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May 07, 2015
Thursday 45 min
12:30 - 01:00
Oliver participated in a school-wide activity.

May 05, 2015
Tuesday 60 min
12:30 - 01:30
The sciences
Oliver and I got acquainted and discussed his favorite scientific subjects. He assured me that astronomy was his favorite. He knew that the suffix ‘ology’ meant ‘the study of’, so I quizzed him on the definition of some different areas of scientific investigation. Our conversation covered astronomy, biology, botany, paleontology, archeology and geology. I shared some of my experiences with geography, and we used a map to find some places and terms to discuss. For the last few minutes we played the game apples to apples with some other students.

We did some light stretching before our warm-ups: sustained hissing to cultivate breath-support and "throwing" our voice like a basketball (sighing high to low) and then "picking up" our voice (sliding from low to high). Several arpeggios ascending and descending to warm-up the range and get the breath supporting the tone. We're continuing to focus on singing in head voice and removing the pressure from behind the sound (singing vs. "shouting"). We also learned how to mark our music with breath-marks and slur marks so we know when to breathe and when to carry-through. Musical phrasing, a musical sentence, is much like a spoken sentence, we discussed. It's important to make those breaths count so we can sing all the way to the end of that musical phrase! We talked about the importance of listening and following directions so that we can make the most out of our lessons together.

C tetrachord review - hands apart, hands together with success! G tetrachord - hands apart, hands together with success! New today - D tetrachord. Hands apart was a success and hands apart is coming along! We began the fingerings for an entire C major scale, learning to cross fingers and thumbs at the right time so that our hand which only has 5 fingers can play a scale that has 8 pitches :) We are still working on my one rule: please don't play the piano while I am talking. We discussed today the importance of listening so that we can make the very most out of our time together. We did a few minutes of written music theory work: finding and labeling the keys on the keyboard.

Oliver completed lesson 1 of keyboarding and then began a new lesson using the top row of keys. He did very well and was very focused. We practiced writing a paragraph starting with what we did in keyboarding, adding details, then going back to add a few more sentences once we were done with the research. He has a chart to use to remind himself of the qualities of a good paragraph. While conducting our research I taught him how to use the public library website to find books on his topic as well as how to narrow his topic down to a few main things he would like to investigate.

Oliver began his session by continuing to work on his chameleon pet writing. We focused on adding supportive details, channeling his creativity with exciting adjectives and descriptions, and different writing styles. In reading, we continued to work on Burmese Pythons Invade the Everglades. We reviewed what Oliver had already read, continued working on vocabulary and definitions, and discussed the various ways to find definitions. We will finish working on this reading comprehension activity on Monday.

We began Oliver's session with a quick review of his homework. We discussed the passage he read, his answers, and his thoughts on the topic. We then transitioned into our reading activity for the day, which was an a non-fiction article called, Burmese Pythons Invade the Everglades. The article had social studies and science cross-curricular ties, and explored the history of the Everglades, invasive species, and the Burmese python. The article contained quite advanced vocabulary, so Oliver worked on definitions during the reading process. We did not have enough time to complete this activity, so we put it away until tomorrow so that we could segue into writing. Oliver worked on a new prompt today that asked, "If you could have any pet, what would you choose and why?" Oliver was quite excited by the prospect of ANY pet and after much deliberating, decided to go with a chameleon. Oliver worked on creating what types of activities he would do with this chameleon and had himself giggling quite a bit at the prospects of dancing with his new pet. Oliver put this writing in his - work in progress - section of his notebook and will continue working on it tomorrow.

Oliver began his session listening to a short story called The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds. Reynolds has crafted a simple but inspiring story that recognizes the creativity in everyone and shows how simple words can inspire that creativity. This is a book for all those people who have been told they can't by someone, because it proves that imagination lies within us all and that we only need hear it from someone so that we may begin to believe it ourselves. Reynolds reminds us of the powerful influence of teachers and their ability to challenge the preconceived notions we might hold about ourselves, encouraging us to dream and turn those dreams into reality. I encouraged Oliver to read this book as a writer and think of the message as a writer instead of an artist. He was very receptive to this idea and was able to think of Reynold's message as a way for him to generate ideas when it comes to writing. As a continuation of our activity, Oliver worked on a writing activity. He wrote in response to the prompt, "What can you create with just a dot?" Oliver brainstormed ideas before writing and verbalized an excellent response about his dot being the top of the letter z in Brazil. From that z, he would create a map of the world. In brainstorming Oliver used descriptive language and exciting details. In moving from this his verbal plan to writing, Oliver lost many of these words/details and his writing became more simplistic. This is an area that needs development and we will be focusing on incorporating adjectives and exciting supporting details from his writing plan. During the actual writing process, we had mini-lessons on punctuation, capitalization, proper nouns vs. common nouns, spelling, and sight words. We transitioned from the writing activity, to a reading comprehension passage about Astronomy (one of Oliver's interests). Oliver read a story called, A Stargazer's Guide to Mission Control. During the reading process, we discussed vocabulary words, strategies the writer used to help make the passage exciting, author's purpose, and supporting details. Oliver answered comprehension and written response questions after reading and did an excellent job.

Oliver began his first morning completing both a reading and writing survey. The surveys covered likes, dislikes, areas of strength and weakness, and goals for Oliver in both subject areas. The surveys were a great platform for Oliver and I to get to know one another. We discussed books that he has enjoyed reading, genres of literature that he prefers, and his favorite authors. Oliver shared the different types of writing that he worked on during the past year in school and expressed that he prefers creative writing to formulaic writing. To assess Oliver's reading skills, I had him read a level Z Raz Kids book about Robin Hood. He did very well reading the book, but did need some assistance with vocabulary. Moving forward in the Raz Kids program, we will focus on the higher level books paying close attention to comprehension and vocabulary.