Martial arts classes. Also I like lifting weights because I can be done in 15 minutes. I have good intentions about exercising but ... books are so much more interesting.

It is usual for a student who has taken 4 years of Japanese to have less conversational and reading ability than a student who has taken 4 years of Spanish, FWIW.

Oddly, I have liked the latest ones even more. I feel that he's been getting into deeper subjects, a bit darker, but still not losing the humor. The last few have had me both laughing and crying in various places.

It's a lot more difficult to justify why an 8th grade class is high school level if it's not math or language. I don't think I'd count history, and I don't think I'd count physical science either (although I might if it were biology -- that is less ambiguous). Imo, it'd look like you were trying to pad the transcript.

Sorry, I mis-wrote -- Pyramids is the one that's about math and Egypt. Small Gods is only very loosely related, although it's also a great book.

There really isn't much romance. There *is* a guild of "seamstresses" in Ankh-Morpork that an adult will easily recognize as prostitutes (headed by Rosemary "Rosie" Palm ... snrrrrrk), but their activities are never (as I recall) described. I read a few that were ... hmm ... you needed background knowledge to appreciate ... so I thought it was a terrible series. Then I picked up someone's copy of "Guards! Guards!" on a long trip, and fell in love. I've read the whole series multiple times now, and I'm about due for another read now that I think of it. Here's a reading order suggestion chart: http://www.lspace.org/books/reading-order-guides/the-discworld-reading-order-guide-20.jpg I'll describe each sub-series to help you with your preference: Rincewind novels: I find Rincewind amusing but it's not where I'd start. Rincewind is an utterly incompetent wizard mostly known for his ability to escape death whilst getting into amusing scrapes. Witches novels: The later ones are truly excellent, but I didn't find Equal Rites gripping, although it introduces the redoubtable Granny Weatherwax. It might be more interesting for her, though, as the protagonist is a young woman who is accidentally a wizard, battling a sexist establishment of wizardry. This subseries could also be started with Wyrd Sisters, and it's a pretty good one. YA novels: Sort of tied into the witches series (after all, Tiffany Aching is a witch), but I don't think it's prerequisite knowledge. She meets the characters from the witches series, but they aren't major, major characters, and you can figure out who they are from context. I'd consider them a good entry point, especially for a teenage girl. Pyramids/Small Gods: These books are AMAZING, but I think they'd be of more interest to an adult who had an adequate background knowledge to really appreciate them. Pyramids is especially interesting to those who are mathematically inclined -- even if they don't recognize the terminology, the mathematical camels are incredibly hilarious. Pyramids would also be a great entry for someone who was fascinated with Egypt. Death novels: Again, I didn't find the first one gripping, although one of my absolute favorite characters (Susan Bones) shows up later on. In Mort, Death (who is an anthropomorphic personification) decides to take an apprentice so he can have a bit more free time. He's also hoping to marry off his obnoxious adopted daughter. Watch novels: I love Guards! Guards! I am not sure that a teen would find it quite as gripping. It's about the city watch and a naive bumpkin -- Carrot, who incidentally is a human who's been raised as a dwarf and still thinks he is one -- who comes to a corrupt town determined to make good. Carrot has read and memorized the book of laws and cannot conceive that there would be a law which is on the books, but not enforced. This is my favorite major subseries of discworld. Industrial revolution: If you have someone who knows a lot about the history of movies, this might be an interesting entry. There are a huge amount of references to early movies through clever wordplay.

I wouldn't change until you start feeling out of your depth. You never know -- you may find you surprise yourself. I *would* look through the upcoming week's lessons over the weekend once it gets more difficult, so that if there's anything you feel a lack of confidence in explaining you have time to research.

FTR, I investigated these statistics a while back. It is common to claim that they were vanishing on their own, but virtually every site I've found making this claim has plotted the mortality rate rather than the incidence rate, or occasionally used some data which has been cherry-picked, to say the least. It is certainly true that these diseases were becoming fatal far less often than before with improved health care, but plotting the *mortality* rate tells us nothing at all about whether the disease itself was vanishing. Plotting the incidence of *disease* gives a far different story. I'm linking an anti-vaccine site to illustrate the kind of deceptive charts used: http://childhealthsafety.wordpress.com/graphs/

Heh ... this reminds me of when a friend of my brother's invited himself in for dinner. We were having prime rib. When he got his portion, he looked at it, went to the kitchen, microwaved it until it was gray, then went to the fridge, found the ketchup, and slathered it on top. My mother told my brother "The next time he invites himself in for dinner, let me know so I can make hot dogs."

Heh, and some colleges ban this practice (the single-page document) because then "students won't read the syllabus" -- they literally micromanage your paperwork to that extent.

Man, Faith, that sounds like such a complete and utter nightmare.

David Weber's Honor Harrington series (space opera). SM Stirling -- anything he wrote (alternate history/fantasy). Chapters of many are available on his website.

Why not just start by doing a lesson a day, and if she gets frustrated, drop back to half? In other words, you don't need to make a plan NOW and stick to it.

The lazy way to solve this problem is: Let n be the number of eggs so I don't have to write "the number of eggs" over and over again. n must be one more than a number which is a multiple of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. The least common multiple of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 is 60. So n must be one more than a multiple of 60. n also must be divisible by 7. Let's just list off numbers that are one more than a multiple of 60 until we get to one that's divisible by 7. 61, 121, 181, 241, 301 ... ta-da! And yes, that's a boatload of eggs. Maybe they were quail eggs. However, this solution used trial and error, which is fine for numbers of this magnitude, but sub-optimal with larger numbers. Explaining the Chinese Remainder theorem and using it to solve this problem would require explaining modular arithmetic and a fair amount of background. However, once you HAVE the theorem, you can use it to solve arbitrary problems like this much more quickly.

1) no 2) like her posts a few times and they will show up more frequently. fb is really annoying that way.

Well ... my mother listened politely and said "that's nice, dear" when I tried to explain my dissertation to her. It doesn't get better :p

Number theory :D In its basic form, it is used to solve problems like this: An old woman goes to market and a horse steps on her basket and crashes the eggs. The rider offers to pay for the damages and asks her how many eggs she had brought. She does not remember the exact number, but when she had taken them out two at a time, there was one egg left. The same happened when she picked them out three, four, five, and six at a time, but when she took them seven at a time they came out even. What is the smallest number of eggs she could have had? (posed in a text by Brahmagupta, 7th century AD)

I remember reading that, although thankfully I haven't run into one yet.

While I would agree about not overstressing, I *would* try to figure out what was different between this year and the last that caused their scores to drop, and look for a pattern of wrong answers etc. If they'd been near the 50th percentile all along I wouldn't be at all concerned, but dropping from "awesome" to average is something I would investigate.

I just taught out of the Lial trigonometry book -- in my opinion, it would be a mistake to try to do this book before college algebra.The intermediate algebra doesn't include trig as Kareni mentioned. The intermediate algebra would just be algebra 2. Algebra 2/trig is likely to be challenging -- this is frequently an honors option to get students into calculus faster, so I'm not sure that you're going to find a solid text that's less challenging than Foerster. Personally, I'd recommend (if you think Foerster is too much and want to do Lial) completing the Lial intermediate algebra text, then starting the precalculus text and just getting as far as you can. If you don't get past the trig section, transcript it as college algebra instead.

Chemistry is almost always a physical science. Environmental science is frequently a life science but some don't count it.

Rather than trying to figure out her work, I think that she should simply start over on the incorrect ones if sufficient work is not shown for you to easily follow her work. It is not the grader's responsibility to figure out what convoluted process the student was trying to use. I would let it be up to her, though, if she wants to spend her free time trying to do the problem her own way instead of playing. This is a very valuable mindset to have. Showing work IS something she needs to work on -- but don't let it come at the expense of exploration.

Now I understand your decision to move to calc :D

Did he do tablet class alg 2 as in your sig? There's no trig in that, so I would suspect the trig sections of a modern calculus class would be pretty difficult. I'd recommend this -- http://www.amazon.com/Just-Algebra-Trigonometry-Calculus-Edition/dp/032167104X -- for a quick summary of the trig you need to know, paired with the calculus topics where you need it. It's also pretty cheap, used.

Yeah, with kids like that I'd let them test out. My personal opinion.