This week went pretty well for me on KA, although I definitely didn’t get through the four units I was hoping to get through. 🤦🏻‍♂️ I did, however, make it through two units and probably spent 7-8 hours working on KA in total, so I had that going for me which was nice. Once again, the content I worked through was time consuming and not very challenging. In an ironic sense, the fact that it wasn’t challenging made it challenging since it seemed so tedious and dull. In total I watched 19 videos, read 12 articles, did 10 exercises, and finished two unit tests, but I only made notes on nine things. There were a handful of videos that had some interesting bits of information in them (mostly concerning word parts and etymology,), so it wasn’t all bad, but overall it wasn’t the most exciting week for me… Nonetheless, I’m still committed to going through all the grades in ELA in chronological order so that 1) I can say that I did it, and 2) to fill in any gaps I have from working through all of this stuff years ago back when I was in elementary school.

Here’s everything I made notes on this week:

ENGLISH LANUGUAGE ARTS

5^th Grade Reading, Grammar, and Vocab

Unit 1 – Vocabulary

Lesson 3 – 5^th Grade Vocabulary Words | List 1

Video 1 – Competition, Overcome, Achieve | Vocabulary

I learned (or reviewed?) from this video that the suffix ‘-tion’ turns words into nouns, and actions and things. Ex. compete (verb) -> competition (noun). I also learned that the word ‘overcome’ literally came from the idea that someone might be, for example, coming over a hill or something like that. (In retrospect, I’m not sure how I never made that connection before.) I was also told/reminded that the suffix ‘-ment’ is another suffix that turns verbs into nouns, ex. move -> movement; ship -> shipment.

Video 2 – Survive, Endure, Extreme | Vocabulary

This video talked about the origin of the word ‘survive’. ‘Sur-’ means over or beyond, ex. surpass: to pass beyond, surrender: to give over. The suffix ‘-vive’ means to live. Ex. revive: to bring back to life; vital: required for life. Therefore, survive: to live beyond.

Lesson 4 – 5^th Grade Vocabulary Words | List 2

Article 1 – Vocabulary List 2

I was surprised reading this article when I saw that the pronunciations for ‘conflict’ were different if you’re using is as a noun (KAHN-flikt) versus if you’re using it as very (Kuhn-FLICT). I just thought this was a bit interesting and worth noting here in this post. 

Video 3 – Traditional, Oral, Narrator | Vocabulary 

In this video, David mentions that the suffix ‘-al’ makes nouns into adjectives, ex. music -> musical; bride -> bridal; brute -> brutal; tradition -> traditional; orator -> oral. He then Goes on to say that the suffix ‘-or’ turns a verb into a person-who-does-the-thing or, in his words, a “thing-doer”, ex. governor: a person who governs; detector: a person who detects; narrator: a person who narrates.

Lesson 5 – 5^th Grade Vocabulary Words | List 3

Video 3 – Recently, Voyage | Vocabulary

In this video, David explained that “adverbs describe verbs and adjectives in the way that adjectives describe nouns.” Ex. in the sentence “I travelled recently”, the word ‘recently’ describes how that person travelled. The ‘-ly’ suffix makes adjectives into adverbs, ex. happy -> happily; quick -> quickly.

Unit Test

Question 1

This unit test took me about three minutes to get through. I didn’t read most of the questions since they just asked me to determine the definitions of words like the ones from the previous videos, but since I already knew their definitions, I didn’t need to read the passages of text in order to understand them from the context clues given in the text. (FYI I also did three exercises in this unit that all similar types of questions but I didn’t make notes on any of them because the questions were all super easy.)

Unit 2 – Reading: Key Ideas and Details

Lesson 1 – Quoting Text Evidence

Exercise 1 – Text Evidence

Question 2

This was a straightforward exercise where I just had to read the text in each question and determine which sentence/paragraph was the strongest piece of evidence for the claim being made. It took me about two minutes to finish. I wasn’t going to add any notes about it here, but I figured I might as well just so I had something to talk about in this post.

Lesson 4 – Determining Theme and Summarizing Story

Exercise 1 – Theme

Question 3

Again, this exercise wasn’t too hard, but there was more reading involved in each question so it took me a bit longer than the other exercises I did. (I’m guessing this trend will continue as I go through the grades in ELA.) The question above was by far the most difficult one in the exercise. In my mind, a few of the given solutions were connected to the theme of the text, so it was a bit tricky figuring out which ones were the most connected. But I ended up getting this question correct, most likely because I’m a gangsta. 

Unit Test

Question 4

I got through this unit test in less than 10 minutes. I read through all the text in the first three or four questions when answering them, but about halfway through the test I started to just look at the solutions and guessing the answers. I ended up getting every question correct doing it this way (🤦🏻‍♂️), although I felt a bit bad about doing it. I feel like speed running these exercises/unit tests is not the best way for me to actually learn, but I also think there’s an opportunity-cost to reading every question all the way through. Part of me thinks that the sooner I get through these simpler grades, the sooner I can get to more difficult grades where I feel like the content I work through will be much more difficult and which I’ll learn much more from. (That’s what I’m telling myself anyways…)

And that was it for this week. As I said, I’m disappointed I didn’t get through more than two units, but it’s not like I didn’t put any effort in. Given that there’s 16 units in the Grade 5 ELA course, at this rate it’s going to take me two months to get through it. 👎🏼 If I could bump up my pace to three units a week, I could be starting Grade 6 in the middle of November which would be great. I suppose there’s no rush for me to get through ELA and I truthfully do want to make sure I’ve mastered all the content before moving on, but I also don’t want to be bored out of my mind for the next few months. I’ve found that a good strategy for these more tedious units — and also maybe a good strategy just learning, in general — is to work on KA for ~30-minute chunks/intervals. If I can do 3×30 reps of KA each day, I think I have a shot at getting through three units this upcoming week. 🙏🏼

So, as always, fingers crossed this strategy works for me and I get to the end of Unit 5 this coming week and be ~1/3 of the way through this course! 🤞🏼