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During this session, we worked on reading comprehension and 3rd grade math. Within our session, we practiced vocabulary development through reviewing sight words and reading comprehension questions. We ended our session with math review and practiced fractions, addition, subtraction, and multiplication.

We reviewed for the student's exam on Friday. She had an extra credit test review we went over. She had a very confident grasp of the material.

Today the student and I worked on his spelling, math, and history. We began by studying his spelling list, which consisted of words using the prefixes pre- and pro-. As we've done in the past few weeks, we started with defining the prefixes, and then going through and defining each of the 20 words on the list. When he didn't know a definition of a word, I had him break the word down into component parts. After doing this, he was almost always able to figure out the meaning of the word. I think this exercise was really helpful for him. When he doesn't know the meaning of a word, he tended to guess, or give up. By showing him that he can break complex words into pieces--pieces that are familiar to him--he saw that he can work out the meaning of the words on his own. This is something we have touched on before, since his spelling lists have recently all dealt with prefixes and suffixes, but this was the most in depth discussion we have had regarding breaking down words. It's something I'm sure we'll continue to do in the future. He had already completed most of his math homework, so I just went through and checked his work for him. Everything that he had done was correct, but we did spend a little bit of time reviewing how to work with fractions and mixed numbers. We did a few word problems to help the student practice identifying which operation to use, and he did extremely well. Finally, we worked on his history. He had already read a few chapters in his book about the French and Indian War, as well as the lead-up to the Revolutionary War, but he wanted to spend some time reviewing. We read through these chapters again, and we paused after every few paragraphs to summarize and break down what we had read. He had already mentioned that this process of summarizing helps him remember the content of the book, so we really focused on developing and outlining the narrative of events. I asked him lots of questions along the way, trying to get him to think critically about the countries and individuals involved, and their motivations for what they were doing. The student seemed to respond to this process, and by the end of our review he said he felt confident that he had a good grasp of the material. This is a process that we will continue doing in the weeks to come, and I'm hopeful that it will help improve his retention of the material he is learning in his history class. All told today was an excellent session.

The student is focused on his upcoming finals which start next Friday. We focused on quadratic functions and polynomials. He understands the concepts thoroughly but, because of this confidence, sometimes rushes through the problems and misses simple steps. We focused on being efficient and neat with his work. This definitely made him more aware of each step throughout the process of a problem and yielded more accurate results the first time instead of going back and re-doing problems. We will continue finals prep next Tuesday and Wednesday.

Today we reviewed genetics concepts including Punnett square practice, genes, alleles, zygosity, and related vocabulary. The student completed a fill-in-the blanks notes document as we reviewed the terminology and then completed relevant practice problems. We also began sex-linked genetics and dihybrid crosses, and he learned to solve such problems using Punnett squares as well. He is comfortable with the material and we will continue this concept review and quiz learning style during the genetics unit to facilitate retention and practice.

The student had completed half of his practice test, and he scored extremely highly on it, in the 30s on English, reading, and the portion of math he did. We wrapped up with a final abridged drill; here, he scored a 27 on English and low 30s on all three other section, for a 31 composite. Based on his consistently high performance in our last few sessions, I think he is ready for Saturday's ACT.