Today's lesson focused on our social studies class project. Atticus selected to explore Japanese culture and the symbolism used to build their communities. Atticus reviewed material that detailed early Japanese geography and culture.

Atticus started off class with a drawing of one of his favorite anime characters. He then proceeded to work on his second self-portrait. We worked on how creating the skin tone on this anime version of himself would differ from trying to create a realistic skin tone on his last one. We went over how to apply pressure to pencils and follow the form of the figure so his skin looks smooth and animated.

I worked with Atticus to create the head for his clay sculpture. Atticus molded the clay into egg-shape and I placed dots on the clay so that he could create the eyes and place the nose. Atticus completed the design by placing the nose.

Atticus finished his self portrait and wanted to add in extra project before his next project which will be one-point perspective. He wanted to do a self-portrait of himself as an anime figure. We worked from the portrait he already did and found source images for the eyes, mouth and nose of an anime figure that most resembled him. Then he sketched out the design and transferred it using carbon paper onto the drawing paper.

Atticus worked in PrismaColor pencils to finish his self-portrait. He worked on finishing the background and he added fish in a contrasting color as a pattern for the background. Then he finished coloring in the details of the face. I helped his blend some shadows around the eyes, on the mouth and on the sides of his cheeks. We worked on holding the pencil at an angle and creating fast strokes that follow the form of what we’re coloring. This means, if something is curved down, your brush strokes should follow that direction.

Today, we reviewed how the salamander growth video demonstrates cellular organization, growth and development, reproduction, and multicellularity. I wrote related questions on the board, then wrote the beginning of an answer (restating the question/modeling). Atticus went up to the board and filled in the blank with an accurate answer. I then had Atticus write down the questions and his answers in his notebook.

review writing with hiragana-
location words and new verbs-

This morning, Atticus checked and corrected his homework on finding distance on the coordinate plane using absolute value when two points share a point on the x- or y-axis. Then, he took the lesson's quick check quiz and scored 75%. He is still struggling with the (x,y) order and how to graph rational numbers on the coordinate plane which we reviewed again. We finished with the unit's final lesson, which is representing polygons on the coordinate plane and Atticus will find the perimeter of these polygons tomorrow. For homework, he was assigned review questions on understanding integers and rational numbers on the number line.

As we began a new essay on Friday, we started today's session by my distributing a list containing transition words and phrases. I described when and how to use these transitions and the difference between a short answer response and a developed essay .I further provided alternate verbs to incorporate into an essay such as "portrays, illustrates, evidences" etc. We then discussed chapter 11 of the book and reviewed Atticus' homework responses making modifications where appropriate. Last, Atticus worked on a vocabulary exercise using words from the novel.

Today, we reviewed some of the characteristics that living things share: organization, growth, development, and reproduction. We viewed a time-lapse video of a salamander developing from a single, fertilized egg cell into a fully-grown organism. In the video, we were able to see the cell dividing, and with each division doubling its number of cells (reproduction/growth). We were able to see the organism form different features, such as gills, legs, a head, etc. (development/organization). We paused the video at key points to discuss these findings.