Monday, Spetember 21, 2009

 The Star Chamber!

Frazer apparently had a great morning with Marmi learning about gentle cindy and the magic e.  I will write about these another day.  He is averaging in the high 70's for his drill deck which is great.  He working to discriminate between the various ways the /k/ sound is spelled in his dictations.  I had no idea there were so many rules.

We came home after after dropping off Porter and he set up the calendar.  We jumped straight to Great Leaps.  He bumped up a bit in the number of words and decreased the number errors.

We began with reading the Let's Fly a Kite which I read to him.

He was clear on what was going on and able to predict all the next actions of the story.  He did a nice job summarizing the story.  When I got out the centimeter graph paper, he knew we were going to do a symetrical drawing.  I wanted him to decide how we were could divide the paper in half with out just folding it in half.

We counted the height of the squares.  26. When I asked how we could figure out what half of 26 was, he started counting.  I gave him colorful mini popsicle sticks.  We counted by twos so that he would only need to take away one to figure out half.  13.  He counted thirteen spaces and with the ruler to guide for a straight line he divided the paper in half.  I drew a design with all right angle shapes. I then let him color each separate space with a different color crayon. He worked hard to stay in the lines either pressing down heavily or almost too faintly.  He then copied.  I guided his work by telling him a step by step approach.  First copy the space adjacent to the mine and count spaces and build either left or right or up and down.  With me helping him count the spaces, he knew which direction to go in how to proceed.  We will need to revisit this idea regularly to increase his ease with doing this exercise.

 

We then moved to reading the last chapter of Henry and Mudge in the Green Time.  He is mostly reading independently - with me helping one maybe two words per page.

Before he read, he G.O. without me prompting him.  We need to finish the chapter and use the G.O. to break it down.

I wonder if  his comprehension will be aided by these devices which might to give him a vehicle to discuss the material.  I think he understands plenty but his processing speed impedes his ability to explain what he knows.

We read the first chapter of Mission Addition learning about addends and sums and how addends are interchanging.  the book was more fun than this description.  I  am very pleased to find so many good books at the library the use storytelling to explain math.  I think that hooks Frazer into the story.  It also exposed him to the horizontal and vertical representation of the equation.

We ended our time playing a game of "More" with Porter.  Using Everyday math cards numberd 0-10, Porter and Frazer each had half the deck.  They also had unifix blocks.  Each player turned over a card.  First, the player had to decide which number was greater.  Porter answered this most of the time -- correctly --with me reading him the number -- he does not identify the number and symbol beyond his five fingers really.  Although he got good at counting the dots on the cards.  Every time Porter got that correct, he got a unifix cube.

Next, the difference between the cards had to be determined and that was Frazer's job.  He got these right 24 out of 26 times.  A few times he used the number line but the more we played (2 rounds) the more he was able to computate or know the the addition fact.  The first game Porter won 35 to Frazer's 34.  The second game Frazer won by 14.  I let Frazer use the calculator (something he had been dying to do) to add the totals of both games together and see the overall points and the difference between them.  He was excited to use the calculator.

While I tutored, Frazer went outside with some guidance and further redirection from me on making our street map.  He does not underatnd how the houses are marked.  He knew where to find the house number but he did not put the corresponding on the map.  This was independent work and he did a decent job but he needs more explicit instruction and perhaps modeling with this.