Today Marcos took a vocabulary quiz (expressions, words). Marcos and I reviewed grammar notes about expression frequency with adverbs. I explained: a) Siempre, Rara vez, nunca are usually placed before the verb. b) Mucho , poco are usually placed after the verb. C) Todos los dias, a veces, de vez en cuando can be placed at the beginning or the end of the sentence. Then Marcos wrote several examples applying this grammar notes. Also we reviewed information about his final work an autobiography.

Marcos completed a balsa wood glider in class today. He carefully cut out the parts and assembled them following a store bought plane for his pattern. It has been a pleasure teaching Marcos this school year.

In preparation for the grammar section of the Final Exam next week, Marcos completed exercises on misplaced modifiers and removing superfluous words from sentences. We also reviewed Marcos' homework questions on the Asimov science fiction short story. I emphasized the need to delve into the text to draw inferences and to determine the author's tone and intent. We specifically discussed the sarcasm/humor in the final sentences of the story wherein one of the characters admits that he made all of the planet's critical military operational decisions by flipping a coin rather than by relying on a supercomputer. For homework,Marcos is to study for the Final Exam which is scheduled for Tuesday.

In the short time we had today, Marcos and I discussed his report card grade and comment.

Marcos completed reading Una Visita a Mexico. Marcos read in Spanish, translated and answered the 30 questions at the end of the story. He did very well.

Marcos and I worked on creating the six black stars of his string art design.

I challenged Marcos to see if he could answer the STEM science questions used in a Science Bowl competition. This led to discussion, differences of opinion and clarification.

Marcos worked on his end of course test in class today.

Marcos perfectly completed a number of pronoun -antecedent exercises in preparation for the final, and we then discussed the Asimov story,"The Machine that Won the War". I elaborated on the anti-industrial movement of the Luddites and posed the question whether Asimov was a Luddite or just skeptical that humans could create a perfectly functioning computer. We discussed how the story illustrates that even in a fantasy world of science fiction it is foolhardy to overly rely on technology . We had a good discussion detailing how today almost every communication and commercial transaction is dependent on computers , and we contemplated the consequences of various technological failures. Marcos' homework answers reflected that he had some difficulty with the plot and drawing inferences . To address this issue, we spent some time studying the text which proved valuable . For homework, I assigned completing the remainder of the questions on the story as they require a textual analysis.

We looked at the probability of people having IQs in different ranges. Every normal distribution can be transformed into a standard normal distribution with a standard deviation of 1. A standard normal distribution table, or z-table, can be used to determine probability. The z-table gives us the area/probability to the LEFT of z. Marcos learned to convert the value from a normal distribution to the corresponding z-score.