Post date: Jan 10, 2016 11:49:01 PM
Math 7H Period 1/2
SOLs Covered: 8.3a,b Practical Problems with Proportions & Consumer Applications
Math Unit: #12 Ratios, Rates, & Proportions & #13 Consumer Math
CCPS Student Digital Resource: Practical Problems with Proportions & Consumer Applications
Upcoming Assessments: Coding PBL for 2 weeks! No assessments until the week of Jan. 25.
MSM2 Period 5/6 & 9/10
SOLs Covered: 7.4 & 8.3a Practical Problems with Proportions
Math Unit: #13 Ratios, Rates, & Proportions
CCPS Student Digital Resource: Practical Problems Involving Proportional Reasoning
Upcoming Assessments: 2.10 Consumer Math Quiz (Fri. 1/15)
I wanted to start by updating everyone on some new classroom policies I've set up for the new year that I'm hoping will help increase student success. This will not affect the majority of students, just those students who have not been completing the assigned work. Those students will be switched to paperwork instead of digital and will lose Chromebook privileges while in my class. This will mean those students will get paper copies of assignments and the Chromebook will need to be put away completely (off and in the desk) during my class. This is because too many students are playing games, listening to music, or watching videos instead of following along during class, some innocently thinking they can manage multitasking, others intentionally not working. While we have a resource (Hapara) that allows us to see what sites students are on, teachers can't be on it the entire class. While I try to keep an eye out when I'm not on Hapara, some of the kids are good with switching tabs and hiding stuff quickly. Students will not be allowed to have on headphones/earbuds unless they have a 75 average or higher for this reason as well. Again, this only applies to those students who have not been completing their assignments, which is marked in grades on StudentVUE/ParentVUE with missing or incomplete notes; an exception will be made for students with one or two incomplete assignments (ex. someone who forgot to finish a document or two, but has the vast majority of their work) as long as they continue to work on completing the assignments, keeping in mind that the term ends on January 29th. I will be speaking with the individual students this applies to (now and anytime it might apply in the future) and continue reaching out to their parents regarding assignments as well as this new strategy. All other students still have the option of completing their work digitally or on paper if they so chose. If anyone has any questions, please feel free to contact me at anytime.
Now onto this week's work. Both groups were working on practical problems involving proportional reasoning this week. The 7H students were wrapping up their work with this along with consumer applications through completing a study guide and reviewing prior to take a test on the units, which overall had excellent results. The MSM2 students were only just starting work with proportions. They've also done fairly well with the topic, though there are some struggles still on correctly setting up their proportions. To help with this, I'd like to remind students to include the units (or keywords in some circumstances) to ensure that the proportions are correctly set up and to use the #hashtag method, this is what I call the method we use to make sure that everything lines up correctly, either highlighting or drawing lines through the matching items, which should be in the shape of a "hashtag" symbol # if it is correctly set up). We'll build on this further this week as we incorporate it into our unit on consumer applications.
All students are reminded that we are quickly approaching the end of term. They should be wrapping up previous work (finishing missing/incomplete assignments and doing corrections on assessments) and any available extra credit (an additional opportunity was provided for all classes during unit 12 and a new opportunity will be given by the end of this week). In addition to the available after school (and rarely before school) tutoring time, I've also arranged with the library that I can borrow a table or two during lunch to work with students, so there is now an additional opportunity for students to receive extra help.