We watched the Meet the Germans Road Trip 2 Southern Germany video and discussed the cultural traditions and important points about the south. Discussed vocabulary such as dirndl, Tracht etc.
During the first quarter of the session , we discussed Henry James' letter to a friend wherein he purports to respond to the novel's central question: Is Daisy an innocent, a flirt ,or a societal rebel.We discussed James' explanation that the novella is a tragedy illustrating how an innocent , uncultured girl, oblivious to societal norms ,is sacrificed to a social order she does not understand or appreciate. On the board, we began a thematic analysis of how the societal norms are reflective of a societal patriarchy as these mores clearly do not apply to Winterborne, a man. During the remainder of the session, Joshua participated in school wide safety drills.
This morning, Joshua worked on physical vs. chemical properties. He classified whether given properties could be observed with the senses and observed without destroying the object or if the substance reacts and is fundamentally changed.
I continue to highlight textual examples evidencing the central question of the novel: Is Daisy a flirt, an ingenuous innocent, or a true rebel when she defies the strict social norms of polite society that define a woman's role . We then discussed the irony of Daisy loitering beneath the famous Vasquez painting of Pope Innocent X who also was reputed to be less than innocent. As James' literary technique serves as a forerunner of the stream of consciousness narrative of Joyce and Wolfe, I pointed out how James' reveals a character's consciousness even in the absence of the character speaking or undertaking any outward actions.
Today we reviewed the Take home test that Josh had a few weeks ago. He got a 57% on it which is worse than we both expected. We went through all of the missed problems together. I will say the test was quite challenging. The concepts that were tested required a higher order thinking level. Joshua seemed to understand them once we went through them together. Next we completed the 3.12Notes. These used the pythagorean identities we introduced yesterday. I had Joshua lead the problems as I guided him. He needed reminders once to use factoring techniques. He will get more practice for homework.
Joshua and I discussed Pythagorean Identities. First, we proved the identities by starting with the Pythagorean theorem and the Unit circle. Then we used reciprocal identities to derive two more Identities. Next we practiced using those identities to perform trig proofs. This was the first time Josh said, "I like it!" in a while! Things have been tough lately, but I think he found some appreciation in the the puzzle-like nature of these problems.
