I introduced the week's spelling words. Oliver viewed a powerpoint on subject-verb agreement on chomp chomp.com. He completed an assessment online. Oliver read "Life Doesn't Frighten Me," by Angelou and "The Open Road," by Whitman. He determined the theme of both and compared them. Then he read an excerpt from "Bud, Not Buddy." We discussed the theme. He compared and contrasted the poems and excerpt. He wrote sentences in response to the comprehension questions. For homework, Oliver should finish reading a chapter in "Legend" and review spelling words.

This activity was a continuation of rate, time, and distance problems. The lesson started with basic r x t equals distance and ended with various manipulations of the formula.

We started the activity with percent increase and decrease problems and started to solve problems that involved rate, time and distance. This was an important lesson for Oliver because he feels this is an area of mathematics that is difficult for him.

We started the lesson talking about the algebra skills needed in this activity. We talked about the algebra term cross multiply and what it really means. The lesson also had Oliver practice with signed numbers, distributive property and more than on variable.

Chapter test in science...

Our activity involved graphing quadratic equations using both the calculator graphing feature and standard form.

Lesson 4: Comets and Meteoroids – We learned about comets which are made up of rocks, ice, and dust. Gravity between the particles in a comet hold it together. They orbit the Sun in long elliptical orbits. As a comet approaches the Sun, a bright tail can develop on the comet. The solid, inner part of a comet is called the nucleus. As a comet approaches the sun, it heats, changing some ice in the nucleus into a gas. Energy from the Sun pushes gas and dust particles away from the nucleus and makes it glow. A short-period comet takes less than 200 years to orbit the Sun and they usually come from the Kuiper belt. Long-period comets take more than 200 years to orbit the Sun and they come from the Oort cloud. Next we learned about meteoroids which are small, rocky particles that move through space. As it passes through Earth’s atmosphere friction with the air makes a meteoroid and the air around it glow. A streak of light in the atmosphere made by a glowing meteoroid is a meteor. Most meteoroids burn up in the atmosphere but a meteoroid that strikes the surface of a planet or a moon is called a meteorite. A meteorite can form a bowl-shaped depression called an impact crater in the surface it strikes. Next we added notes on dwarf planets, asteroids, comets, and meteoroids to our science notebook.
Discussion Question:
Why was Pluto reclassified as a dwarf planet instead of a planet?
Pluto orbits the Sun and is spherical, similar to a planet, but it is not significantly larger than other objects around it. For example, one of Pluto’s moons is about half as large as Pluto.

The lesson on taking square roots gave me an opportunity to talk about the relationship between taking square roots and absolute value. We also talked about extraneous roots and why the occur. The next lesson was solving ratios with variables. It was also a chance to work on his basic algebra skills.

Oliver completed a spelling assessment. We reviewed conjunctions, how they connect ideas, and how selecting the appropriate conjunction is important to making the message clear. Oliver edited a paragraph for capitalization, punctuation, usage, and spelling errors. We read and discussed a chapter in "Legend." He read a nonfiction article on Newslea.com and completed the comprehension questions.

Oliver completed Lessons 5.00 with quiz, 5.01 with quiz and advanced assignment, and began 5.02. He will be finishing 5.02 at home before next Tuesday to stay on track for his course.