I continued to work with Natalie on topics of weakness revealed in her practice test on quantitative reasoning. The first topic we started to review is evaluating expressions with parentheses by using the distributive property. We did a few problems with varying degrees of complexity. There was no assignment.

Before we proceed to the next chapters on the role and structure of the Federal Reserve, we are reviewing banking and investment options, and forms of business organizations. Natalie reviewed the text and in class completed written exercises on investment options, forms of bank accounts, debit vs credit cards,as well as an analysis of a corporate organizational chart. She did very well on all of the classwork,and we corrected the few areas that needed modification. Critically, once Natalie is made aware that an answer is not correct, she can very quickly recognize the correct response, thereby evidencing a good grasp of the material. For homework, Natalie's long essay on fiscal policy and income inequality is due tomorrow.

I continued to guide Natalie through problems involving metric to feet conversions, set operations, rotations and reflections of geometric figures. I showed her some ways to make educated guesses. We practiced problems based on what she had difficulty with on the practice test. There was no assignment.

Natalie continues to examine some advanced supplemental reading addressing monopolies and oligopolies and their impact on competition. As we are having a test on Thursday , we also reviewed budget terms such as balanced, surplus, and deficit, and reviewed the elements of a loan : principal, interest, and APR. We further discussed the role of a credit score. Tomorrow, we will continue reviewing the other material that will be on the test. For homework, Natalie is completing her lengthy essay on fiscal policy due on Thursday, and for tomorrow completing the study guide questions on the supplemental material on monopoly and oligopoly.

Natalie and I continued to work separately on problems from the practice test. There were statistical problems dealing with charts and unions of sets. We also solved problems on proportions, equivalent algebraic expressions, rates of work, and properties of exponents. There was no assignment.

Natalie studied (and took a quiz on) T.S. Eliot today. She wrote an interpretation of a portion of his poem, "The Wasteland," to be discussed and graded. Natalie then continued to work on her British Literature timeline (major project) and hopes to complete it by March 15 for the end of this quarter.

Natalie continued to work on problems requiring quantitative reasoning, algebra, and statistics. There was a problem on finding the equation of a line passing through two points and the y-axis. She also had to find the mean of five numbers, analyze a bar graph, and determine the meaning of a number in a word problem. The problems were of moderate difficulty. Natalie was unsuccessful in all of the problems we did. We made notations to review the topics more. There was no assignment.

Today Natalie watched a 25 minute documentary on The Heart of Darkness as shown in the "Great Books" series on public television. It clarified and simplified some difficult parts of the book, and brought out the background and purpose of the author. Natalie took part 2 of the Heart of Darkness Quiz, and continued working through the packet that involves thinking through character analysis, theme, quotes, and so forth.

We reviewed Natalie's homework on monopolies, mergers and made additional notes on the role of the FTC and anti-trust laws in curbing monopoly power. I then distributed some advanced supplementary material on monopolies, natural monopolies, and oligopolies , alone with a study guide. In order to give Natalie some practice for college study, the study guide required Natalie to highlight answers to the questions in the text. We discussed how for highlighting to be useful ,the student must only highlight the critical passages,not the entire page. Natalie read the material and started the highlighting work which was very well done and precisely focused on the answers to the study guide questions. Natalie continues to work on her lengthy essay on fiscal policy and income inequality for homework due next week.

I continued working with Natalie on questions for quantitative reasoning, algebra, and statistics. The problems we worked on today included part of the second practice test and were much more complex and included algebra and fractions. Natalie had trouble with most of the problems today. There was no assignment.