Today, Keaton completed his research essay draft by adding parenthetical citations, as well as the Works Cited page. He was diligent with MLA format, and I instructed him in the citing of the personal interview, film, article, speech, and PDF file. At the end of his session, he printed his essay draft. We will do our writer's workshop for revisions on Tuesday.

Today we began with a discussion on Current events from several sources, including BBC, American Thinker, Drudge and CSPAN. We discussed the latest Supreme Court decisions, and the controvercy over the Texas license plates vs Free Speech as listed in the first amendment.
We also continued work with The Tipping Point, and Keaton was given reading questions for each chapter.
Finally we continued working on the Music in the Decades project.

Keaton is still adding details and supporting evidence to his cetaceans in captivity essay, so we are waiting until Monday to complete our writer's workshop. For now, we read a sample narrative essay and completed a detailed brainstorming activity to identify possible future topics.

Today, Keaton told me that he was unable to finish the essay draft the night before; therefore, he spent time writing with me. He added a page to the research paper on cetaceans in captivity, integrating his primary and secondary research in MLA format. Once he was done adding to his essay draft, we printed a copy and revised/edited.

Keaton and I reviewed some of the articles in Everything's an argument, and applied rhetorical analysis techniques for practice. We also reviewed MLA format.

June 18, 2015
Thursday 60 min
12:30 - 01:30
Lab exercise.
This hour was dedicated to preparation for field lab. Keaton was tasked with demonstrating his ability to construct an investigation using the proper methods of Scientific procedure. He designed an experiment he will conduct next week by posing a question, forming a hypothesis, and designing a methodology with the proper materials. He was asked to prepare his notebook for data collection and bring it with him on our field survey on Wed.

June 16, 2015
Tuesday 180 min
09:00 - 12:00
Chapter 54 Community Ecology.
Keaton and I continued our discussion on Community ecology. Themes included competition for resources, ecological niches, predation, character displacement, symbiosis, parasitism, mutualism, and commensalism. Keaton was tasked with using different equations to measure nd monitor species diversity, to see how the higher the diversity the healthier the environment, and vice versa. The chapter ended with examples of community structure around dominant and keystone species.

June 15, 2015
Monday 60 min
12:30 - 01:30
Chapter 54 Community Ecology.
Keaton and I discussed the processes associated with Community ecology. We compared the Population ecology (which involves a single species) to the ecology of interspecific interaction. Examples of different influences on a community were explored, and contrasted while Keaton reasoned out the processes that lead to the success and failures of biological communities.

Today we began with a discussion on Current Events. We discussed the Pope's stands and speeches on current issues, including the environment. We also discussed the shooting incident in the South Carolina church. We discussed presidential candidates, including Donald Trump. And we also talked about some free speech issues a professor is having in South Carolina. Keaton completed SOAPS assignments for each article/issue. Next we reviewed The Tipping Point and the assignment Keaton had completed. We talked about the ways the book effectively, or ineffectively, looked into how issues and trends spread among cultures. I introduced Keaton to Howard Zinn and his "People's History of the United States," which will be the next book we read. We watched a video on Civil Disobedience in which Matt Damon reads portions of a speech given by Howard Zinn. Finally, we worked on Keaton's "Music Through the Decades" project, and focused on issues and music of the 80s and 90s.

Today, Keaton printed, revised, and edited his second page of the cetaceans in captivity research paper. We completed a writer's workshop, and he spent some time writing page three, asking me questions along the way. After that, he completed his survey and approached others to take his survey for data collection. We began the narrative essay project by reading the first few sections of Tuesdays with Morrie, the bestseller by Mitch Albom.