Today we reviewed the Red Scare, the McCarthy Era and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, American citizens who were convicted of spying on behalf of the Soviet Union. Arrested in 1950, the couple were convicted of providing top-secret information about radar, sonar, jet propulsion engines and valuable nuclear weapon designs (at that time the US was the only country in the world with nuclear weapons). Convicted of espionage in 1951, they were executed by the federal government of the US in 1953 for becoming the first American civilians to be executed for such charges and the first to receive that penalty during peacetime.

I introduced Jaydn to regular polyhedrons and explained how to count the vertices, edges, and faces. I showed her Euler's formula and demonstrated how to calculate their values. We also examined the cross sections of various prisms and I told her the names of polyhedra including tetrahedrons, octahedrons, and dodecahedrons. There was no assignment.

Jaydn was introduced to a new novel The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah. She watched a video interview with the author about the novel and a video of the setting for the novel in remote Alaska, so she could visualize the setting of the novel as she reads it. Jaydn then read, discussed, and analyzed the first chapter. She analyzed the three main characters as they are introduced in chapter one. She then wrote, citing text, to describe the positive and negative traits of each of them. She then predicted which might be the antagonist of the novel.

Absent for 4th period class.

Jaydn completed the novel Where the Crawdads Sing in the last session. Today she watched a video of an interview with the author Delia Owens as she took the interviewer through the setting for the novel in the marsh land of North Carolina. She discussed how and why she created the protagonist, Kya. This interview brought the novel alive to Jaydn. Jaydn also learned the importance of researching an author's background before or while reading a novel. It brings tremendous insight into the characters and setting. We again discussed the term self-defense and Jaydn pretended she was a prosecutor and then a defending attorney. She took text from the novel and created a court room scenario for both defending and prosecuting the protagonist. I then introduced the next novel to Jaydn and ended the session.

Today we learned five new verbs in Spanish and then we talked about the country that she is going to choose for her final project. She is undecided and has until the next class to make a decision.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has become a symbol of hope as Ukrainians defend their country from the Russian invasion. As Russian forces began to close in on the Ukraine capital, Kyiv, over the weekend, Zelenskyy refused to leave his country, declaring he would fight back. "The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride," Zelenskyy told U.S. officials on Saturday. But the 44-year-old's rise to global attention is anything but ordinary. He isn't a career politician, and with fears of the Russian invasion possibly being the start of a wider war, Zelenskyy's family has very deep connections with World War II. After earning a law degree, Zelenskyy joined a comedy group in the late 1990s that became widely successful in Ukraine. The group's success launched his acting career, starring in various films. But Zelenskyy really rose to fame for the show "Servant of the People" in 2015. In the show, he played a high school history teacher whose rant on political corruption in Ukraine goes viral and results in him becoming president. Three years after the show's debut, the television production company behind it launched a political party named after the show and Zelenskyy ran for president in the 2019 election, unseating incumbent Petro Poroshenko by winning more than 73% of votes. His family fought and died during WWII and the president, who is Jewish, had family members who were killed by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. Three out of four brothers were killed by the Nazi's. Zelenskyy is the grandson of the one brother who survived.

Jaydn completed the novel Where the Crawdads Sing. We discussed the character twist of the character of Kya. We then analyzed the term "self defense" and Jaydn wrote to convince her version of the term self defense, using the text for support in her essay.

We practiced present progressive and five verbs that she has to learn for the next class.

I reviewed area formulas for triangles and trapezoids with Jaydn. We also went over arc lengths and areas of sectors. One problem included formation of figures from different shapes. I showed Jaydn how the entire area was found. There was no assignment.