One thing I got out of ds' experience with Expository Essay was a good way to structure our time in teaching writing at home. In EE, they did two essays, spending three weeks on each one. The first week was where the real teaching of new concepts was and the student did some practice with new skills (like writing several thesis statements). Meanwhile the student was choosing a topic for the essay, mulling it over through the week. The second week, the student did research and made an outline. The third week was drafting and revising. I really like this plan and we're going to basically copy it at home. One week to teach new concepts while choosing a topic. At home we will also use this time for reading and analyzing well-written professional writing from our collection of essay anthologies. Then two weeks to plan and write the essay. I like that it gives a break between writing projects, that it gives time dedicated to teaching and practicing new skills, and plenty of time to choose a new topic.

No, not the Philadelphia Story! I mean, okay it's a fine movie. I love Cary Grant and Hepburn. But there are a dozen movies just like it. (And Bringing up Baby is better!) But High Society is a one-of-a-kind jewel. Forget about the fact that it's a remake and watch it just for itself. It is literally a perfect movie. Every scene, every line, every shot is a work of art. Not that I'm biased or anything. :lol:

I would just write a list of subjects they've studied ("State history", "handwriting", etc.) and for math and English maybe add a description of the level they are working at or the name of the curriculum. I would add a note that all subjects are taught to mastery and leave grades off altogether.

In that situation, I would use DuoLingo.

Yes, but it would not be simplified. A fraction with a negative denominator is not considered simplified. So the negative could be applied to the entire fraction: g - 4 x = - ---------- 2 Even better, distribute the negative through the numerator: -g + 4 x = ---------- 2 That one is not wrong, but most mathematicians prefer not to lead with a negative term, so this would be better: 4 - g x = ---------- 2 These display fine on my screen. I'm hoping it works for others as well.

Casablanca. We just saw it in the theater a couple of weeks ago (our theater is doing a series of classic movies and we bought tickets for the whole series). I hadn't seen it in so long and was bowled over by it all over again. It really is SO GOOD. It might be boring for an 11 year old, though. I'll just put a plug in for one of our family favorites: High Society. Where else can you see Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, and Grace Kelly all together? Not to mention Louis Armstrong! It is such a fantastic movie and deserves more attention.

Probably two years. He got to about 20 wpm after one year and maybe 35 wpm after another year. That was starting at age 10 and practicing 3-4 times a week.

I also need to find a way to enforce deadlines at home. Ds was up late a couple of Fridays to get his BW work done. He never takes my deadlines that seriously. :cursing:

My ds was in the same class. It was both good for him and *really* helpful for me to see the kind of feedback the teacher gave. We're planning to do a couple more BW courses next year -- Rose has posted about doing English at home but supplementing with a few BW courses and that seems just perfect. I don't want to outsource English completely or even mostly. We're considering MLA Research Essay, SAT/ACT Essay, and Passion for Fiction.

Thanks for clarifying. When I click on it, it says that I have to sign in with my "tv provider", so I assumed that meant you need to have cable tv. But either way, I probably don't have a way to access it. I'll check back later for the archive. It's probably less stressful to watch it after the fact anyway!

Let t measure the time in minutes. The first tank begins half full (400L) and adds 45L per minute. Call its volume A. A = 400 + 45t The second tank begins full (940L) and loses 45L per minute. Call its volume B. B = 940 - 45t When will they contain the same amount of water? That's when A = B. 400 + 45t = 940 - 45t 90t = 540 t = 6 ****** Alternatively, consider that altogether the tanks have 1340L of water to begin. They will be equal when they each have 670L. That means tank A must gain 270L and tank B must lose 270L. Since the water flows at 45L per minute, this will take 270/45 = 6 minutes.

Bummer. Looks like you have to have ESPN service in order to watch. Hopefully the archived version will be available to everyone.

I never did an all-nighter before a test. It was always to finish a paper or project. I wouldn't recommend it, but if done rarely when you otherwise get enough sleep, it can be a way to accomplish a lot. More fun if others are staying up with you. The physics lab was a popular spot among my friends. The stools were uncomfortable enough that you wouldn't fall asleep. ;) I have stayed up all night occasionally as an adult, usually to prepare for a trip. Added bonus that I could sleep on the plane (flying makes me very nervous).

Ds said AB seemed easier than his practice tests. He finished the whole thing, which is amazing. He was happy to run into several kids he knows from theater.

Just saw this on twitter. :lol:

That's good to hear, Attolia. I dropped ds off at 7:15 this morning. It was a little complicated because dh had a dentist appointment at 7 and we only have one car. So we all left the house together at 6:45, dropped dh off at the dentist, then took ds to the test, then went back to the dentist for dh, dropped him off at work, then did the grocery shopping and came home. Ds is going to take the transit bus home. He said he might stop at Dunkin Donuts first. ;) He seemed relaxed and not too tired (he's NOT a morning person), so we'll see how it went.

Favicon is back. I don't know if it fixed itself, or someone fixed it, but I'm glad to see it back. Thanks!

Best wishes for good health to your dd, Attolia!

And do you know of ways to teach/strengthen it? My teenage ds struggles with executive skills. The book Smart But Scattered Teens was a godsend for us when we read it a couple of years ago. Finally we had the vocabulary to articulate the problems and see what the root issues were. Using that book's terminology, he struggles most with task initiation and prioritization. He's made good progress, though it doesn't always feel that way! But recently we've had some discussions that made us all realize that there's something dh and I both do quite naturally but ds does not. It may be related to working memory, but it seems a little different to me. So I'm turning to you all, the experts! Here are some examples: I'm doing my daily walk and as I walk, I look at the trees, smile at passersby, etc. Then this thought floats up into my mind, "What should I make for dinner tonight?" I might push the thought away or I might think about it for a few seconds. A few minutes later another thought pops up, "What should I put in my article for the church newsletter?" Again, I might think about it or not. Dh is sitting on the bus on his way home. He's looking out the window and then this thought pops into his head, "Where should we go camping this summer?". He thinks about it for a little while. Later on, as he's walking home from the bus stop, he starts thinking about a problem he's working on at work. This time he pushes the thought away, because he tries not to think about work outside of work. Okay, what I'm referring to is that moment when the idea "floats" into conscious thought. All of these items I mentioned (make a meal plan, write a newsletter article, plan our summer camping, etc.) are on our to-do lists in some form, whether written out or just on a mental list. But what happens for both me and dh is that we do a lot of work on items where decisions need to be made by brief thinking sessions in odd corners of time. I don't consciously choose to think about my article. My brain just prompts me, and then I decided to go with it or not. Some tasks don't seem to work well by just sitting down to work on them. In particular, tasks that are essentially making a decision -- What topic should I write my essay about? Where should I apply for a job this summer? What classes do I want to take next year? I know that for me, it's very difficult to say, "I'm going to sit down for twenty minutes and decide what my essay topic will be." And from what I have observed, that doesn't work well for ds either. For me here's what does work: I may spend some purposeful time brainstorming or doing some freewriting and putting a few ideas on paper. In the case of choosing classes, I might list all the possible classes I'm interested in. But then I put the task somewhere in the back of my mind for awhile, ideally several days. And I find that it will "float" to the front of my mind periodically and over those days, I end up thinking about it several times. At some point my thoughts start to clarify and I feel ready to make a decision. Somehow that kind of thinking -- little microbursts of thinking whenever it comes into my mind, spread over many days -- is far more effective than trying to force my mind to think on demand. Dh says that he does much the same thing. In talking to ds, we have found that he doesn't do this at all. Even though he's looking at his task list on a daily basis, those items basically never just "float" into his mind. :huh: Instead, he thinks about books he is reading, story ideas, ideas for his gaming hobby, etc. Obviously, one explanation is that those projects are more important to him than the ones on his task list! But actually, some of the projects on his list are very important to him. Many are his own personal goals. It's not just school work and other things imposed on him. But it appears that stories and games are the only things his brain holds "in the back of his mind" where they can float into conscious thought now and then. Everything else is out of sight, out of mind. Of course I'm not saying he shouldn't think about stories and games. Just that it would be great to find a way for other ideas to float up occasionally as well. Because without that step, making decisions is really hard. Sitting down to focus on the question might generate a few ideas but no clarity, or worse, a mental block with no ideas at all. But if he stops focusing on it, it goes completely out of his mind. There is no "mulling it over" in the back of his mind. So the next time he sits down to focus on it, he is in the exact same situation as before. Any thoughts on this?

Kathy's post is so great. I just wanted to comment on the calculator part. Perhaps my kid isn't "most kids", but it's taken him a fair amount of practice on the graphing calculator. He started using it about a month ago (so four weeks before the exam) and spent an hour or two learning the functions. It's true it's not too hard to learn. But getting speedy at it has taken longer. And the hardest thing for him has been learning to *recognize* problems that he should use the calculator on. His inclination is to pound away at a problem trying every possible integration technique rather than to turn to the calculator. The number of problems you really, truly need a graphing calculator for is pretty small from what I can tell, but when you come to one, you'd better know how to recognize it and not waste precious minutes. Ds is taking the AB exam on Thursday after studying AOPS at home. We didn't get through quite enough for him to do the BC (we'll finish it up after the exam or next fall).

Yay, Luckymama! Thank goodness for empathetic administrators.

Oh wow, that's great news. Ds might be in better shape than I thought then. He knows the material well, but the time just kills him. This morning I was watching his precise work on a FRQ and I was like, "Can't you write your equals sign faster than that?" :lol: He just has never learned to hustle.

How thoughtful of you to look for me. Thanks! At least it's *something*. I was kind of shocked at what I plugged in, though. I kept dropping the score to see when it would drop from a 5 to a 4 and found that you could get 68% of the MC and 67% on the FRQ and still get a 5. Does that seem accurate?? Normally I think of 68% as a pretty bad score. :huh:

Thanks. I wish there were at least one online that had a formula. I'm not really inclined to go out and buy another test prep book at this late date. I guess I should have checked before buying the Princeton Review book.

Can I ask what practice tests give a score at the end? We have a Princeton Review book and the College Board free response questions from past exams. But neither of these shows how the raw points translate into a final score. It would be nice to have a little more context going into the test.