Nicole and I worked on her end of year review. We completed Chapters 1 and 2. Topics included simplifying and evaluating expressions and solving equations. She did a good job.

Nicole and I spent our time together, completing her compare and contrast essay. She did an excellent job with the task, with insightful thoughts about the characters. A compare and contrast essay is difficult to structure, especially with such different books. But at their core, both stories were about teenage girls dealing with adversity and coming of age. Nicole did an excellent job capturing that idea.

Nicole watched different clips from Grey's Anatomy and discussed the plot. We did a recap of the year.

Discuss temperature in terms of average kinetic energy. List and differentiate between the 3 scales used to measure temperature, Fahrenheit, Celsius, and Kelvin. Stress that a reference point is needed to compare the average kinetic energies. Explain Thermal energy in terms of the total energy of all the particles in an object. Thermal energy depends on amount of particles.

First, nearly half of a Michigan high school's valedictorians since 2014 have come from the same family. We learned more about this interesting family of hard working achievers. A young Florida man who worked for a cruise line has been stuck on a ship for 62 days in an Italian port. He's been tested 8 times for coronavirus. This past Monday marked the 40th anniversary of a major volcanic eruption in the U.S. On May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helen in Washington unleashed one of the biggest volcanic eruptions in U.S. history. We viewed photos from this historic event. Days and weeks following the eruption, the volcanic ash in the atmosphere literally impacted weather across the U.S. from the west to east coasts. Finally, we learned why the US-Canada border will remain closed to nonessential travel.

We began a new story by my reading and Nicole repeating each phrase for proper pronunciation. Nicole then translated the story one paragraph at a time. New vocabulary was added to her word bank and grammar was identified. Nicole will do exercise A and B for homework.

Nicole and I had a very productive Language Arts session. In preparation for next year, Nicole got permission from her mother to purchase Grammarly Premium, which checks spelling and grammar and makes suggestions to improve writing. We ran several essays that Nicole has written through Grammarly, including her BBDO speech, and Nicole was amazed at the improvements in her writing. It doesn't write for her, and I emphasized that sometimes the changes that it suggests don't make sense, so it's essential to think critically. We returned to the compare and contrast essay that we began last week; we will work on it more tomorrow.

Discussion on how all forms of energy can be transformed into other forms of energy... Examples of the most common forms of energy, and examples of thermal to chemical, chemical to mechanical, chemical to thermal, and mechanical to kinetic. Application questions answered from text along with summary questions...

I began with a phonological awareness exercise, level K2#7, followed by a review of the sound deck with visual, auditory, and blending drills. As with Ayden, I am emphasizing the vowel with multiple pronunciations (y,ea, ou, ow) and the myriad of spellings for each vowel sound. I re-visited the lesson on ei, eigh as /A/ and taugh ei as /E/.

The Navajo Nation has surpassed New York and New Jersey for the highest per-capita coronavirus infection rate in the US - another sign of Covid-19's disproportionate impact on minority and improverished communities. This is a tragic repeat of how smallpox decimated indigenous peoples in the Americas throughout the 16th century, during the Columbian Exchange/European Age of Exploration. The Navajo Nation, which spans parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah reported a population of 173,667 on the 2010 census. With sick citizens, the Native American territory has 2,304.41 cases of Covid-19 per 100,000 people. We looked at why there is a high rate of infection and the measures being taken to help the Navajo people. There are many Native American communities that are suffering greatly during the pandemic.