Today, Atticus began brainstorming and looking for materials to build his model eye. He recorded his material used for each eye component and the reasoning he used to choose that material. We built the model eye and he explained why he selected each material.

We continued working on basic guitar technique. We worked on changing between the D and Em chords while strumming.

We studied the final poem of our poetry unit the famous "Charge of the Light Brigade." For homework, I had distributed a one paragraph historical explanation of the Crimean War and the battle along with some reading comprehension questions. We reviewed Atticus ' homework answers and worked on reading comprehension skills After Atticus made numerous additions and modifications to his homework responses, we read the poem aloud noting how the rhythm of the poem duplicates the sound of horses running. Atticus further identified the poetic devices of personification and rhyme in the poem. Last, we discussed the meaning of the famous lines,"Theirs is not to reason why/Theirs but to do and die."

Using the Body Shields to practice the following combination: jab, punch, and roundhouse kick.

Sumo: Push your partner out of the ring. Strength and balance training-

-what kind of? many situations-

-season and weather

During the first segment of the session, we discussed the poem "House on a Hill" and the role of subjective interpretation of symbols ,such as the house, in poetry.We then supplemented Atticus' written homework by commenting on structure and the poem's tone. Atticus raised interesting questions regarding the poem's sad theme and wondered if all poems were sad to which I told him ,"no" and reminded him of the two very uplifting poems we had studied during the week. During the second segment , we continued studying spelling and suffix endings and considered the "doubling rule" for vowel suffixes . Atticus then completed a number of suffix ending exercises evidencing good mastery of this skill.

Atticus did research on the Suez Canal after first watching a video about it, and he subsequently answered questions pertaining to the material. When afforded supports, Atticus's attention was re-directed to the task at hand and he was then able to demonstrate good saturation of knowledge as noted by his responses to queries.

This morning, we began with a review of the unit’s material learned so far to prepare for the upcoming unit test as well as reviewed last night’s homework on understanding dependent and independent variables and using patterns to write and solve equations. Then, our lesson looked at analyzing the relationship between independent and dependent variables in tables and graphs and then relating them to equations. Together, we practiced using equations to complete tables and plotted the ordered pairs on coordinate planes.

Continuing our poetry unit, Atticus discussed Teasdale's "Barter." He did very well in recognizing the theme and meaning of the poem and in identifying structure and rhyme. We discussed how each stanza explores a different reward of living , ie. the appreciation of nature and the connection to love and the spiritual. We then worked on identifying poetic devices such as metaphor and simile noting the two items or ideas compared.After we completed our analysis , Atticus wrote an analytical paragraph summarizing our class discussion,

Today, Atticus watched a Khan Academy video explaining and illustrating the parts of the eye and their functions. He began drawing a diagram of the eye's parts to use as a guide for creating our model eye.