starchamberexpereience: Day four, Spetember 4, 2009

Today was as study on how we will have to navigate other time constraints on our star chamber time. We had an abbreviated session of 3 hours today. While we could have managed more, three hours one-on-one is not shabby.

Our focus today was trying to get Frazer to link the numerical date and the date written out long hand. I am trying to help him see that September and 9 indicate the same month. He wrote out date on wipe board after completing calendar which after just two days, he seems to have down pat. I may let him teach Porter who is wanting to stick a number in the calendar square.

We have also been working on organizing words into alphabetical order. That term is not familiar to him but he handily organized his "outlaw" (words that do not follow phonetic spelling) alphabetically. We then moved onto groups of words within the list that share the same first letter and have different second letter. He needed a visual cut off -- I covered all letters after the second -- then regrouped and alphabetized. By third day he took another group of words and was able to refer to third letter without being told how. I will have him sort and hang the remainder of his list and continue to add to it.

Frazer added and edited his piece on the book Neigh into Alpha Smart. He corrected a mistake in spelling horse and realized that he need a u in beautiful. I like that he is open to self -editing. He will move quickly through the process which will be a great help to him. He will just have much to correct which hopefully won't be too daunting.

I will NAM A TIP OF A HORTSeS THROBRED IS A TIP OF A THER NAMS

THER ARE LOTS OF KOlors Horses are nis anemos. They are fun to rid. They are byutifull.

I have printed this out for Frazer to work on tomorrow. He has finished he book which is also exciting. I would like him to respond to the book again if he wants and then only focus on editing.

We did some work with time and Frazer is definitely working to discriminate between the hour and minute hand when the depiction is unclear and the hour hand is in between two hours at the half hour. It is intersting however that the repeated practice in two different workbooks gives him confidence and after 15 minutes of evaluating clocks, he was able to apply the knowledge. Over the weekend I asked him to tell me the time via a clock face and he was successful most of the time. I will contiue with this until we are finished and we then assess.

Frazer is enthusiastic about Great Leaps program. And, while we are in the initial stages, he is responsive to the quickness of the drill. He always clear improvement charts which this reading record easily provides.

Finally Frazer spent much of the day on the map project. I read him poetry about states. He listened while drawing the outside of our house. He kept drawing the traditional house kids draw even when I suggested that he go outside and sketch it. Frazer liked using the ruler to give him straight lines and edges. I discouraged the use of markers as he can get so sloppy quickly. As he colored in his drawing I mentioned again the colors were not the colors of our house. He did not want to change from our colors but I mentioned to him that if his house is for our map, no one would recognize since the colors and numbers of windows were not correct. I sent him out with the camera and he came back energized. He has his drawing but plans on starting over tomorrow. I will try to encourage him to draw either from the photo or from tracing the photo.