8th Grade Overview

Welcome to 8th Grade Math! We are very excited to be a part of this important year preparing our students for high school! Our philosophy of teaching math might be a bit different than you have experienced in the past. We put our heart and soul into our students in our classrooms. That means having the students work in small cooperative groups, teaching in small groups based on student needs to fill in gaps or to enrich, using real life stories to teach, and so much more!

What you will NOT see is homework. WHAT?!?! What we have found is that with all of the other things we are doing in class that are research supported, we just don't have time to go see who has/hasn't done the work, make parent contacts when students are doing the work, go over homework every day, all the things that make doing homework valuable to the students so that they will actually do it. We have also found that it is not research supported for students who don't go home to a quiet place with a parent to help them. That is many of our students in our 8th grade math classes. However, if you would like for your child to have extra practice at home, we support you in that 100%!!! Also, this does not mean your child will never have homework. Sometimes he/she will need extra practice to master a standard and it will need to be done at home. But, it will not happen daily.

For 8th grade math or Math I you will need at least a 1 inch binder. In the binder you will need a pencil pouch where you can keep pencils and highlighters. You will also need 5 dividers in this binder. Labels: Math, Science, Social Studies, Disc 1, and Disc 2. You should also keep loose regular paper and graph paper in this binder. Finally, you need a spiral notebook with at least 150 pages and at least 3 sections (you can have more of either one).

We are also different in our grading practices. Students will take a LOT of assessments. How many? One for each standard the state of NC says we are to learn. This is a chart that explains our grading method: