Christoper took an assessment today and received a grade of 93% on it. He wanted to work on one or two answers that were challenging him, but I encouraged him to move on and go back if he had time. I explained that he did very well on the assessment and received a letter grade equivalent of an A, and he was very happy with his grade.

Christopher was absent.

Christopher's mom took him home early today.

I introduced the session discussing interesting facts about the Earth, such as explaining that 1/4 of the Earth's surface is covered by land. This introduced the topic of its different physical features, or landforms. We discussed how landforms can affect the weather, climate, and the lifestyles of different communities. We then reviewed definitions of 5 landforms and included some examples through discussion. Christopher finished the session completing, with assistance, a hands-on learning activity cutting and pasting different landforms and bodies of water onto a form. We came up with a fun acronym to remind us of the different landforms, using the acronym 'MVP' to help him remember the landforms, mountains, valleys, and plains instead of Most Valuable Player. The rest was easy! Christopher clearly had fun with this activity, especially watching (and, as I subsequently learned) recording my animated reaction to him remembering them all.

Christopher worked on creating a foldable booklet to depict the city, county, state, country, and continent in which he lives. This hands-on activity was helpful to sustain his attention, help reinforce and consolidate prior learning gains and help him understand relationships, geographical terms, and perspective. Christopher was queried to assess his understanding and made an effort to recall the facts we had reviewed. The concrete activity served to facilitate his recall and retrieval skills and engage his attention. He asked to use the globe to show me how he was able recall other facts about lines of latitude, longitude, the equator, and to identify North America as the continent in which we live. We finished the session assembling and stapling the foldable booklet and coloring it, adding pictures and symbols to aid in retention. We displayed the finished product on the bulletin board in his room.

Christoper was tasked with completing learning activities using different approaches to assess his knowledge of cardinal directions. We will continue to practice this and I will introduce IXL to his learning tomorrow in efforts to reinforce and consolidate learning gains. Christopher was amenable to this suggestion.

Today Dutch was given 3 choices of what he wanted to do and he choose making a crossword puzzle for review of Chapter 2 on “Regions” using the vocabulary words from the chapter. We also played hangman to review the vocabulary words.

Jayne read a picture book of Helen Keller and enjoyed it very much. She then cut and paste a timeline of events and had no difficulty with this, working on it independently. We then viewed a video on Helen Keller. Jayne said she found it interesting because she learned that Helen Keller was very mischievous. She was able to back this statement up by two examples from the book - she locked her mother in the pantry and cut off all her friend's hair. Jayne finished the session coloring the timeline.

Jayne researched some facts about Florida and completed a learning activity. She reviewed 10 interesting facts about Florida, choosing the one about the state’s name to include in her work. Jayne said she actually already knew that Florida meant field of flowers in Spanish but she learned that Florida is the lightning capital of the world, that Disney World in Orlando is the biggest tourist attraction, and that at any given location in Florida, one is only 60 miles from water. Jayne required some prompts to write in complete sentences and to aid in spelling, but she worked well and independently.

Andrew and I interviewed one another. We both had a list of questions and took turns selecting questions. The question asked had to be answered by both he and I. In this way, Andrew had equal power in the discussion. Then we moved on to expectations and discussed the student handbook. We finished the session by reading a current event article about the ICE raids. Andrew had insightful opinions regarding immigration, the wall, illegal drugs, and the dilemma of children that are US citizens.