I. The student will learn and apply the rules of writing effective introductions and conclusions.
II. The student will be exposed to literary criticism of Of Mice and Men'
III. The student will work on poster of Of Mice and Men's themes

Adding, Subtracting, Multiplying polynomials - Nicky and I have started working on some 8th grade concepts to give him a head start for next year. He picks up concepts very easily, he did that today as well with the polynomials. We will be practicing this concept for the next few days for him to understand like terms and signs.

Today, Nicky and I started a new exercise working on drawing in realism. We worked on gradient shading.

We learned that people disrupt the phosphorus cycle. In the rain forest, phosphorus is stored in plants and when people cut down the trees, the soil becomes less productive. Then we learned that runoff from farms, homes, and factories often contains phosphorus, which can wash into bodies of water and cause excess growth of algae that disturbs aquatic ecosystems.
Discussion Question:
How can you reduce disturbances to Earth’s natural cycles?
Possibilities include various ways of conserving energy by reducing fossil fuel consumption, such as using a bicycle or public transportation to get around rather than taking rides in cars. Also reducing the use of electricity, lowering heat and using less air conditioning, taking shorter showers or cold showers, planting trees, avoiding foods from crops grown with artificial fertilizers and meat from animals that fed on such crops, and avoiding the use of products that contain phosphorus and that are discharged into the water.

I. The student will revise his essay adding a title and topic and clincher sentences to each paragraph.
II. The student will learn to write a conclusion by writing a sentence or two about each topic, conveying the main idea of each body paragraph.
III. The student will conclude his essay by identifying the most important, interesting, or significant thing to remember about what he wrote and why. The student may choose one of the topics and retell what is the most significant or choose something that tells the importance of the entire subject.

Proportions - how to write an equation using proportions and similar triangles. Calculating the resulting using 2 step equations and the Pythagorean theorem.

Today we discussed contracts and the importance of formal agreements in business. Nicky practiced creating documents and demonstrated his knowledge of business law.

Review and Test on Energy Transfer.

Activity: how do surveyors measure distances across a canyon. How can you use proportions to find lengths and distances of larger areas.

Quiz - square roots and Pythagorean theorem