We studied the interaction between the symbolic metaphors of" the woods burning" and Willy's idealistic yearning to plant seeds and start a garden even where the surrounding buildings have blocked the sun and made growing vegetables impossible. We tied these symbols to an American Dream long associated with the biblical Garden of Eden and then addressed the other symbols in the play: Ben, the broken car and refrigerator, and the silk stockings Willy gifts to his paramour. After Joshua completed taking notes on these topics, we reviewed the essay he began comparing how the characters in the play perceive success or the achievement of the American Dream. We discussed how to organize and structure the remainder of the essay as well as which sections of the dialogue provide good evidence to support characterization.
Discuss Gay-Lussac's law and the direct relationship between pressure and temperature of a gas. Solve a example problem. Introduce the combined gas law which relates the pressure, volume and temperature of a gas. Discuss Avogadro's principle which states that a mole of any gas will occupy 22.4liters at standard temperature and pressure. Solve example problems for both
Per Joshua's request, during the first half of the session, we reviewed the few multiple choice questions Joshua did not answer correctly on the practice SAT. We worked on vocabulary in context and the use of commas to set off appositive phrases. During the remainder of the session we continued to discuss the play. We contrasted the pragmatic Charley with the delusional Willy Loman. I worked with Joshua to demonstrate how to locate textual support for these characterizations. We further contrasted how. the differing "dreams" or aspirations of Linda, Willy, and their two sons create family conflicts that are at the heart of the play.
Joshua got access to the SAT questions he got wrong on the Practice Test he took last week. He took a screen shot and emailed them to me. We printed them and worked on the problems together. The content the questions were on covered material he really would not have seen in a traditional math class. Some of the problems used formulas he had to have memorized. We looked up the Math Reference sheet that is provided and realized it is mostly Geometry formulas for area and volume. Anything Algebra related, they assume the student knows. So the review proved to be good for Joshua. I was able to remind him of the quadratic formulas, the discriminant, how to set up sequence equations, and more. Moving forward, we will work on one or two problems for SAT and then focus on our AP PreCalc stuff.
Joshua researched which composer and classical music piece with lyrics he would like to research and he chose die Erschöpfung. He also began working on his 5 sentences.
