Today we reviewed articles, nouns, and adjectives. We saw a video referring to the Hispanic culture: Como somos? and then we worked on the activity book.

Jaydn and I worked on problems to prove pairs of triangles congruent. This was a review of the SSS, AAs, HL, and SAS methods of proving triangles congruent. I also worked on some external angles to triangles to review their properties. There was no assignment.

Absent.

The Ritchie Boys was a US special German-Austrian unit of Military Intelligence Service officers and enlisted men of World War II who were trained at Camp Ritchie in Maryland. Many of them were German-speaking immigrants to the United States, often Jews who fled Nazi persecution. They were used primarily for interrogation of prisoners on the front lines and counter-intelligence in Europe because of their knowledge of the German language and culture. They were also involved in the Nuremberg trials as prosecutors and translators. They were trained at the Military Intelligence Training Center at Camp Ritchie. They were specially trained in methods of intelligence, counterintelligence, interrogation, investigation and psychological warfare. The Jewish refugees were qualified for these tasks because they knew the German language and understood the German mentality and behavior better than most American-born soldiers. The role of these soldiers was therefore to work in the front lines, at strategic corps and army levels, at interrogation, analyzing German forces and plans, and also to study and demoralize the enemy. The majority of them went on to work as members of the US Counter Intelligence Corps. After the German declaration of war against the United States on Dec 11, 1941, the Ritchie Boys became an important weapon for the Allies. Many of them entered Europe on D-Day, 6 June 1944. Others followed over time. Shortly after reaching land, they left their units and pursued their special tasks. They were able to feed the Allies valuable information. Moreover, the Ritchie Boys helped break German resistance by demoralizing them in both open and covert operations. They interrogated POWs and defectors to obtain information about German force levels, troop movements, and the physical and psychological state of the Germans. A classified postwar report by the U.S. Army found that nearly 60 percent of the credible intelligence gathered in Europe came from the Ritchie Boys. After the war, many of the Ritchie Boys served as translators and interrogators, some during the Nuremberg Trials. Many of them went on to successful political, scientific, or business careers. In August 2021 the Ritchie Boys were honored in a congressional resolution. We viewed a presentation about the Ritchie Boys and interviews with those who are still alive. They're inspiring figures in history.

I used many problems and questions to help Jaydn review what she has covered in triangle congruence and properties of quadrilaterals. We also covered external angles to triangles and their relationships to remote interior angles. There was no assignment.

Jaydn began a new set of twenty SAT words. We discussed each word and she created a sentence for each one. She then read, analyzed, and discussed the next chapter of Where the Crawdads Sing. We discussed the theme of dysfunctional relationships. I had Jaydn review the chapter and find text that supported this theme with innuendo and not literal text. She then wrote a paragraph analyzing the antagonist.

Holocaust denial is the insistence that the Holocaust did not happen or wasn't that bad. What do we do when we're confronted by people who deny historical fact? Today we examined three arguments that Holocaust deniers use and the facts that refute these arguments, then learned strategies for confronting Holocaust deniers. We have learned that the Holocaust was an ethnic cleansing program planned and carried out by the Nazis that resulted in the death of six million European Jews, we primarily learned about Holocaust denial, which is the distortion of arguing that the genocide of Jews in WWII either never happened or was greatly exaggerated. It's based on three primary arguments: that the death rates are exaggerated, that there was no formal policy of genocide, and that Auschwitz was never used for mass executions. All of these points have been thoroughly debunked by historians, as well as an English court of law when denier David Irving sued American historian Deborah Lipstadt. Lipstadt won, with the help of testimony from historian Christopher Browning, but Holocaust denial is maintained by white supremacists. It's a movement built on anti-Semitism and prejudice, but one which is entirely vulnerable to a simple antidote: facts.

Today we looked at adjectives and practiced with complete sentences. She created sentences describing herself and describing friends.

Today we began to learn the gender of nouns: La, El, Las, Los. Then, we watched some videos to reinforce what we had learned.

Jaydn began the session by successfully completing an assessment of SAT vocabulary studied. She will begin a new set of words tomorrow. She then read, analyzed, and discussed the next chapter of Where the Crawdads Sing. She thoroughly loves the novel. After making predictions about the antagonist using text for support, she began a writing assignment. She responded to a quote from the text and elaborated with her point of view and support.