Wow, I'm surprised to read this. We'll be starting R&S soon, and I have allotted 45 minutes for a lesson. I'll certainly be pleased if it only takes half that time! Do you read the whole lesson out loud or just highlight the main ideas? It seems like just reading the text and going over the examples would take 10-15 minutes. My ds is a slow writer, so I'm sure the written work will take longer for him than some. I guess I'll find out soon. We'll be starting our first lesson on Friday.

In math too, or at least it was back in my day. I think I still have an old TeX manual somewhere. What a good idea! My ds is young and still learning the ins and outs of a word processor, but I'm filing this idea away for later.

Tissue paper collage.

:iagree: It might be a useful exercise if you ask *her* to see if she can find the spots where she spoke to the audience. Then you could show her how those could be virtually lifted out of the story and still leave a coherent narrative without the personal commentary. As you already have the story typed up, it would be very easy to see the two versions side by side and hear the differences in how they sound.

When it involves a pencil.

I wanted to highlight this point. This seems like it could be a key. It's not that he has to STOP talking. He just needs to learn to do it silently, i.e. thinking to himself. OP, does that sound like it might be a strategy to pursue? Trying to stop a habit is much harder than trying start a new one.

Where are you getting your recipes? I have dozens of cookbooks, and I don't recall ever seeing one that calls for converted rice.

I don't know, but if you find any good books for the layperson, please post them here. The wikipedia entry on anthropological linguistics sounds fascinating to me! It sounds like she's more interested in the social aspects of language rather than the neurological, but I found Oliver Sacks' books very interesting in my intro to linguistics course in college. They are quite accessible to the layperson.

A flash drive is a little storage device that plugs into the USB port on your computer. They're also called thumb drives. They're just a few dollars at an electronics store and very handy when you need to physically transport a file, like in this situation. To download a pdf, one of the following will probably work, depending on your computer and browswer: click on the link, right-click on the link and select "save as", or control click on the link and select "save as".

Is it a pdf file? After you download it to your computer, put it on a flash drive. The people at the store will know exactly what to do from there.

It was too much for my ds. He is a slow writer. I finally decided it was better for us to focus on the skill-building work of WWS than to burn out by doing both. Through the year we have moved farther and farther away from the History Odyssey lessons. I should probably take it out of my signature! We do the HO map work and he does outlines of some of his history reading, but we do not do all of the summaries that HO assigns. It was just too much for us.

I haven't posted work here before, but I have found others' examples very helpful. These are three topoi papers from my ds 11 as he has worked through WWS. None of them has gone through a revision process (yet). Week 8 Description of a Place for two purposes The room was vast and the ceiling towered high above. The grime covered windows were high and narrow. The dusty floor was gouged with holes in it's rotten boards. In the gloomy twilight the last rays of light struggled through the windows, while shadows lurked in the corners. Dingy, tattered curtains sagged at the windows. The furniture flung eerie shadows that cascaded through the gloom. The room was spacious, and the ceiling soared to a vaulted roof. The windows were tall and curved at the top. The floor was oaken and well polished and swept. The sun was gloriously setting outside, and the light flooded through the windows, but there were nice cozy nooks of shadows in the corners. Light, airy curtains cascaded down the windows, and there was a lot of furniture in the room. Week 11 Ivan the Terrible Right after Ivan the Terrible was crowned tsar of Russia he went on a spree of conquering and added greatly to Russia's territory. Ivan's kingdom expanded into the Mongols, its western neighbors, and some of Siberia. In 1552 the Turkish city of Kazan was taken as well. In 1552 to celebrate his victories the tsar ordered the construction of a new cathedral. Construction began three years later and it took 124 years to build. Originally the church was called Cathedral of the Intercession of the Virgin. Later the cathedral was renamed after Saint Basil the Blessed to give it the name we know today. In the past and probably in the future people will think of Saint Basil's Cathedral as the oddity of oddities. Some people may have trouble believing that it is a real cathedral made out of stone and not a fake cathedral made out of candy by an overenthusiastic toddler who likes bright colors too much. Sprawling majestically, the base has stout columns of rusty brown brick and is teeming with arches adorned with white-washed brick. A central tower soars above the city landscape, surmounted by the largest golden dome with a tapering cross above it. Multiple shorter towers with tops like colored swirls of beautiful whipped cream crowd around the grand, central tower. The tsar began to lose his mind causing him to begin a rein of terror. He became known as Ivan the Terrible meaning Ivan the Dreaded. Once Ivan wrote, "If a tsar's subjects do not obey him they will forever be at war with one another." Ivan the Terrible formed a secret police called "oprichina". They had brooms and black clothes to symbolize sweeping clean. After massacring his city of Novgorod Ivan IV said, "We are free to show favor to our servants and are free to put them to death." Week 13 Description of a Volcano from a Present Point of View Note: Ds chose to describe the birth of a volcano in Mexico that he had read about. It actually did grow out of the ground in a farmer's field. For fifteen days the earthquakes rocked the landscape. They made the ground move up and down as if at sea. The ground undulated softly on the fifteenth day, February 20, 1943, as we went out to the fields. At around 4:30 p.m. the earth split down my cornfield with a dreadful roar. Moments later a hole opened within the deep rent. The hole spewed ashes and fiery cinders that proceeded to set some pine trees about a hundred feet away afire. A sulfurous odor permeated the air while we dashed to safety. That night a thirty foot mound arose from the newborn volcano. On the next day lava started to pour from the volcano's throat. The lava flowed slowly about fifteen miles a hour. It bubbled from the three vents, fountaining into the air, giving the crater a pearly pink light. For nine years the volcano, Paricutin, erupted. In its time as an active volcano Paricutin killed only three people.

:lol: I'm going to have to try the "Susan says so" line. I bet that would work with my ds too.

My 11yo said he wasn't sure exactly but that they had something to do with taxes. I am surprised teens wouldn't know at least that!

:iagree: I do sometimes pay the extortionist prices for a soda, but then I pay for it with bathroom breaks. :lol: Easier just to wait and have a drink afterward.

Could be. I'm not very familiar with those distinctions. NEM 1 covers linear equations, NEM 2 covers quadratics. The Singapore math website has samples and topics covered if you need more detail.

NEM follows this pattern. NEM 1 is beginning algebra concepts in the first half and geometry in the second half. NEM 2 continues with more advanced algebra in the first half and geometry in the second.

I think that's a problem more in an institutional setting. A child with questionable readiness who enters an Algebra I class in a school must go forward at the pace of the class. A later decision to back up in math would mean changing classes and the possible embarrassment and sense of failure to accompany that. A decision to stay in an unsuitable class could mean falling further behind and poor grades. If you are homeschooling, you can work on the material at his pace. You can take the time to revisit topics of difficulty or take a break when necessary. You will be working with him every day and will know if he's getting it or not. Stepping back to review or taking a break or adjusting the pace are all options you have as a homeschooler that a public school program does not. I don't think that algebra is particularly special in this regard, only that as in most of mathematics the topics build on previous ones. So getting behind can have a snowball effect quite quickly.

Good idea, and that's great for your dd. Thanks for the info!

What is the purpose in taking the SAT during middle school? I understand that some schools use this test for gifted students to inform their coursework placement. Is that the circumstance under which your DD took the test in 7th grade? If you were homeschooling at the time, I would be very interested to know your/her motivation. Thanks!

Well, good heavens, I certainly didn't mean to induce a crisis of confidence. I'm sure you're doing fine. I assign papers based on length (200-400 words, for example) so there is no question about whether the paper is of acceptable length or not. But a timed writing test is very different from a standard assignment, and I have often wondered what paper lengths are expected for such tests. You mentioned length and appeared to have some knowledge about it, so I was hoping to learn from your wisdom. I pasted the essay into a word doc to count the words, and offered my thought process. That's all. No criticism intended.

What sort of length do you expect for a 45-minute timed writing? If you allow ten minutes to prepare and outline and five minutes to revise, that leaves 30 minutes for the actual writing. At 10 words a minute, that would give a 300 word essay. That seems pretty quick to me, bearing in mind that the student is composing as he goes. The OP's essay is 195 words.

We bought several lots of "readers" on ebay. Ds grew to love those books he learned to read with, so I've been glad we had them in our permanent collection. We also used the library heavily.

Ah. I have heard that, but phrased as "don't be ugly" or "that's an ugly thing to do". If she had said, "I'm not being ugly . . ." I think I would have understood right away. But when it was phrased as "I'm not ugly . . ." that meaning didn't come to my mind. Thanks for the explanation.

:confused: Can you explain it for us non-Southerners? I would be as confused as your son.