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We had a great session today! He was incredibly focused, positive, and had a fantastic attitude—even when hitting tough problems, he never got discouraged and was totally open to fixing his mistakes.

Here is a quick look at what we covered:

• Section 1 (Money & Fractions): He did a perfect job explaining why a "quarter" means 25 in money but 15 in time. We wrote out 25/100 and 15/60 to show how they both simplify to 1/4. He hit a small snag adding up the mixed coin pile, trying to do too much math at once and getting $1.15. I showed him how to add up the cents first (104¢) and then convert it to $1.04, which clicked. He sailed right through the daily savings bonus!

• Section 2 (Commas & Large Numbers): He started out putting commas in from the left side, but caught himself after rereading the prompt. Reading the giant number aloud was tough for him, so we practiced using the commas as "clue words" to say million or thousand. We made up a few extra examples, and though he still needs some support, he's improving. He aced the missing digit problem. On the subtraction bonus, he aligned the numbers perfectly but accidentally turned a 7 into an 8 while borrowing; once I mentioned a mistake was hidden in there, he found and fixed it himself.

• Section 3 (Time Jumps): He solved the flight timeline completely on his own. For the bus ride problem, it helped a lot when I drew a quick circle clock split into 4 quarters to help him see the time bridge. I had him read the bonus problem completely independently without me reading it aloud. He missed the first part initially, but caught his mistake on a reread. He also accidentally wrote "half past 6" at the end, but when I pointed to his previous work, he immediately changed it to the correct time of 2:30 PM.

• Section 4 (Patterns & Logic): He nailed the skip-counting, but on the doubling pattern, he accidentally added 20 each time instead of multiplying by 2 (writing 60, 80, 100). We underlined the clue words, and once he saw that 5 + 20 didn't equal 10, he figured it out and fixed it. We ended with a coin logic challenge that he worked on entirely independently. He guessed 55¢ at first, so we wrote out all the options from 51 to 59 and crossed off the ones that didn't fit. We narrowed it down to 51¢ right as time ran out.

A Note on Next Steps:

I let him know that from now on, I want him to do most of the talking during our sessions. Sometimes I jump in to read or explain things too early, which can act as a bit of a crutch. I want to give him the space to safely struggle through a problem first!

Our big goals moving forward are to focus on rereading the directions carefully before starting and double-checking answers before deciding he is finished. He did an awesome job today!

Let me know if you have any questions.