Academic Update #4

Recently, I have accomplished much more in my completion of the academic standards set forward by our Open teachers, especially English.

Last time in Math I had told you about my completion of chapter 9. This week, I have completed the first half of our chapter 10 study guide. Alex and I decided this time, similar to last time, to simply go straight to Mr. Davidson, who gave us, as he calls it, a "crash course" in the topics. This has proven to be effective in the past, as we always pick up what he lays down quite quickly. This led us through the first half, and we are relying on the help of a peer, Dylan, for the other half. Dylan has completed all 10 chapters and the final, so along with Rosie, who has done the same, he is the peer to go to when one needs help on math. We hope to finish the study guide, and possibly another this week. The test and final will be taken over the next two weeks, closing out Math for good.

In English, much more has been accomplished since last I told you. I finished my rough draft of my essay, and had it peer reviewed by Alex and Dylan. This prompted many comments towards my intro, conclusion, and formatting of my paragraphs. I spent time with them talking it over, and we finally discovered what was being missed in my paragraphs. We had first thought that I was simply missing a topic sentence leading into each paragraph, but later Alex discovered that I put my topic sentence as the second to last sentence in nearly every paragraph. My intro and conclusion were almost completely scrapped, which I was fine with because I can learn from the mistakes I made here. During this week I also completed two sitting responses, of which I have now only one remaining before I have reached all of my standards, excluding research standards. I hope to finish my other discipline specific paper, likely based off of an AP Gov't and Politics assignment, and then focus on reaching specific standards such as research standards. 

This upcoming week I will be presenting to students in the elementary school in the hopes of influencing them to join our camp. I will likely blog about that soon after it has been done. All in all, I am very confident in my ability to finish all of my standards in both Math and English, as they are progressing at a pleasing rate.