Atticus has significantly developed his essay writing skills this year. Today, he worked on our final essay of the year discussing themes in a "A Long Walk to Water". After I outlined on the board the elements of the introductory paragraph , Atticus drafted a first paragraph that contained a thesis statement and introduced the characters and the setting. Next, we discussed how to tie the second paragraph to the thesis and reviewed our outline to cull textual examples. As Atticus drafted a second paragraph ,I provided instruction on using connecting words such as "likewise, and furthermore" and on avoiding sentence construction relying on the intransitive verb"to be." Homework-complete drafting second paragraph.

This morning, Atticus worked on percentage calculations using an equation to find an unknown percentage, whole, or part. We also reviewed the rules of dividing with decimals and annexing zeros. Then, Atticus completed review problems online on solving 1-step addition and subtraction equations with decimals and fractions. For homework, Atticus was assigned similar 1-step equation problems.

Atticus was given his canvas and we worked on green and yellow areas of his characters.

Atticus and I worked on figure drawing proportions step-by-step. We worked on focusing on the shapes that make up the figure and then adding detail.

Chapter 11 quiz and Japanese 1 final review

Atticus read and discussed Ancient China's contributions and history. He wrote his new vocabulary words and their definitions into his notebook. He learned about famous emperors of China, the great wall, the silk road, Terracotta Soldiers, Chinese writing and the Forbidden City.

Atticus and I worked together to paint the blue and skin portions of the character in his painting.

I worked with Atticus to digitally color a background page for his manga.

I reviewed Atticus' test noting many incomplete answers and provided the opportunity to complete the test questions and short essay paragraph. We next reviewed Atticus' study guide homework on chapter 13 similarly noting incomplete responses . After reviewing the text ,Atticus completed the homework assignment in class. Last, I distributed an essay question on the novel. We discussed essay structure and format and the essay prompt followed by Atticus making some outline notes of textual support to incorporate into the essay.

Atticus learned about ocean currents and upwelling today. He interpreted a satellite image of ocean water temperatures off the coast of California and we discussed how this shows upwelling. He watched a video about upwelling and observed that when wind blows away warm surface water, cold deep water replaces it.