The Sinister Scribe

I’m grouping these two weeks because I’m really behind they’re kinda related… review and testing.

I found math more tedious to sum up with using MathScore.com. If only because it was online and not in print. He practiced speed drills and I can really see improvement there. Testing was minute drills with different (sometimes mixed) operations. I gave him a warm up before doing the official “test.”

Looking back through his history binder I was shocked at how little was there. Most of what we did was oral but there were a few things like his drawings of “Old Al.” I certainly didn’t get to as many of the projects as I had planned. (my fault, not his) What we focused on (not completely intentionally) was specific people… Alexander the Great, Muhammad and Vikings. So after reviewing those things and watching a few related TV episodes from things like Lost Worlds, Digging for the Truth, I tested him on those three topics by having him outline what he knew. If I can keep organized, I’d like to have him flesh out that outline later in the year as part of a midterm-like review.

Vocabulary was a fun test (for both of us). I had him pull out all the main cards from this quarter (17 I think) and make as many words as he could at first using each root only once. When he got down to the last few, I let him reuse any root that would work so that each root was used at least once. THEN, I had him write definitions for each word based on the root’s definition. Reviewing wasn’t so exciting… just used a flashcard approach to refresh his memory.

Beowulf was finished up during these weeks. At one point during review week he didn’t want me to stop reading because it was getting to a “good part.” VBG! Gotta love that. Testing was one part oral summation and one part dictation. Both were great.

Science was simple to review and test. We’ve done quite a lot on paper so we had plenty to review. I love his illustrations of the planets and want to frame them. Watched a few applicable TV episodes (The Universe). For testing I had him narrate what he knew, again in outline form. He did fine.

Didn’t test him on any of the music we’d listened to for music appreciation. We listened to a mix of it each day and that was pretty much it. Art appreciation was the same way though I intended to have him talk about his favorite piece. It just didn’t happen.

As I’m writing this I had a thought to have him print out one of the stories he’s been writing on his own and include that draft in his yearbook. The Narnia news had kind of fallen by the wayside. I am hoping to pick it up again this quarter. I hate leaving things unfinished.

I printed out this quarters hourly totals to file in the beginnings of this year’s yearbook. We were able to get all the hours in. This year it is the core hours that are harder to get enough of. That is partly because I’ve changed the way I’ve designated some subjects as core vs. non core. Also, I’ve broken out required reading from fee reading. Although most of his free reading is not tracked so maybe that is not it.

We certainly had a lot of fieldtrips this quarter and I’ve made yearbook/scrapbook pages for most of them. I’ll post them to picassa later… err… at some point.

The next week (technically 11 but not counted as such) was supposed to be sort of a “teacher’s planning week” but Jessie had the flu all week and I didn’t get much done. Thankfully I’ve got that year-by-week overview so at least I know the general direction we’re heading and know the basic materials we’re going to use to get there.

Ok, I’m sure I’ve forgotten something but I’m going to post this so that I can get going on this quarter’s stuff and the half a dozen posts I want to start about the other gazillion things that go on here.