Luke practiced his fine motor skills by drawing a coral reef in the ocean and a house in the forest. He explored coral, shells and snakeskin in the science lab.

Sydney arrived a little sleepy (apparently, she fell asleep in the car). I started the session outside to wake up and start on a positive note. Using sidewalk chalk, I wrote lowercase letters on the concrete and around the playground and asked Sydney to identify them. She could name m, t, s, f, o, u, c, and y. She was not able to name the rest of the letters. Next, we bounced a ball while singing the alphabet song. Sydney struggles to sequence the alphabet; this is an emerging skill. Going inside, Sydney picked several books from the preschool library (Clifford Loses a Tooth and Clifford's First Christmas). We discussed unfamiliar vocabulary and practiced comprehension strategies. To conclude, we played a game of Phonics Dice to practice letter identification with gummy bears as an incentive. Great work, Sydney.

Pierce

I worked with Quinn this afternoon. We began by working on a few math exercises as a warm up, which proved to be relatively easy, but engaging, for Quinn working on strategies and fluency for addition and subtraction facts. He was able to perform mental math as he tackled the problems - some of which involved expanded form and 10 block groupings. Quinn asked if we could continue to read the book, "There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom;' he remembered many details of the story and where we left off. He also enacted a few of the facial expressions the author described about the protagonist. We identified strategies to figure out some words and phrases with which Quinn was unfamiliar, and Quinn made logical predictions when queried to assess his comprehension and synthesis of the material and inferential reasoning skills. We read 4 chapters in the book before I asked Quinn to write a few sentences summarizing what he read. Quinn is not hesitant about asking for help if needed and asked me what summarizing meant. Once explained, he began writing, but after first asking if he could dictate to me. I encouraged him to write, however, and suggested that he might like to add an illustration if so desired. Quinn approached the assigned task with confidence and was open to suggestions regarding grammar and syntax. He demonstrated excellent recall and retrieval and organization of thought, but benefited from prompts regarding capitalization as well as encouragement to write in complete sentences and elaborate. I reinforced Quinn for his effort and hope to afford him additional strategies to facilitate his writing and composition skills.

We watched Pixar shorts and Richard determined the theme, setting, and climax of the story. Then we played, "Would you rather?" One of the questions was - would you rather have 100 duck-sized elephants or one elephant-sized duck? Richard chose the duck. He had really interesting explanations for his responses. He has excellent critical thinking skills.

To begin, we went through Reid's school folder. He had a new list of spelling words; he wrote them three times as directed. Next we divided the words into categories: one-syllable words with ou, two-syllable "rabbit words, and three-syllable words. We made flashcards for review, and he syllabicated each word on the card. My hope is that being conscious of the syllables will help Reid to spell these challenging words. Next, we read a chapter of Reid's free reading book (Magic School Bus) and recorded the minutes in his reading log. To conclude, we played several rounds of Crazy Moose to review all five syllable types.

Reid was his usual bubbly self today. We began with a game of Crazy Moose (we did not play last session and I promised Reid we would start with it). Reid is getting quite creative in his effort to win! We went outside to practice his spelling words. He bumped his head on the electrical box on the wall; we went inside to get an ice pack and he recovered quickly. While he recovered, we co-read the rest of the Magic School Bus book. Great work, Reid. I hope that you have a terrific Thanksgiving in Chicago!

My goal is to engage Pierce with higher level activities. To this end, I introduced morphology (the study of word parts, or morphemes).The study of morphology greatly increases a student's vocabulary as it improves spelling. I taught the Latin prefix un, the Latin root cept, and the suffix s. We brainstormed example words. Next, I let Pierce choose a book from a selection of different genres. He chose a book about Jackie Robinson. We watched a five minute BrainPop video to introduce the topic, and then co-read the book, pausing to discuss the challenging concept of segregation. Next, I re-taught soft c and soft g. We played a game of Phonics Dice to reinforce the concept, and I dictated example words. Pierce demonstrated mastery of the concept.

My goals for Sydney are to be able to identify the letters, articulate their sounds, and proper letter formation. We played a game of "find the letter" on an alphabet game board; Sydney got a gummy bear for each letter identified. She had a packet from school with handwriting and initial sound activities; we completed most of the packet before Sydney lost interest. I read aloud "The Berestain Book". To conclude, we practiced letters learned last session (c, o, a, d).

Quinn chose his room and enthusiastically requested to continue reading the book by Louis Sachar we've started. He remembered what chapter we were on (Chapter 6) and demonstrated excellent recall skills. Quinn was able to make accurate predictions and synthesized the information with good analysis and integration of the material. He was queried often and readily picked up the nuances and subtleties of the author's intent. We reviewed vocabulary and Quinn understood the words using contextual clues. He showed an astute ability to analyze the dynamics amongst characters and was able to relate to scenarios using situations from his school and personal experience, making connections and responding appropriately to depicted scenarios. Quinn predicted what he thought might happen as the plot continued to develop and used critical thinking skills and higher order reasoning to interpret the consequences of actions and events.