Post date: Sep 18, 2015 8:15:08 PM
Math 7H Period 1/2
SOLs Covered: 7.1e, 7.3a,b Integers
Math Unit: #02 Integers
CCPS Student Digital Resource: Integers
Upcoming Assessments: Square Roots & Integers Quiz (Mon. 9/21); Mini-Project (Due Tues. 9/22)
MSM2 Period 5/6 & 9/10
SOLs Covered: 7.1e, 7.3a,b Integers
Math Unit: #02 Integers
CCPS Student Digital Resource: Integers
Upcoming Assessments: Square Roots & Integers Quiz (Tues. 9/22)
It's Chromebook week and I couldn't be happier! The kids were just as excited as I was to get the Chromebooks on Monday. We spent a bit of time getting our Google Calendars and Drives organized, joined the class Edmodo group while getting rid of the old groups, and familiarizing ourselves with some of our math tech resources (such as the class website) and bookmarking the things that will be used on a daily or weekly basis. This along with a few struggles we had with integers did lead me to slow some of our math work down a bit and while we're behind where I was hoping we'd be, we are still ahead of pace with the county's suggested pacing. I know this might seem like an unnecessary worry at the moment since it's only the second week of school, but I generally try to stay a little ahead of pace during the first semester so if we have winter weather issues at the end of the first or beginning of the second semester, we'll still be on track for the year. I will however closely monitor student needs to see if things need to be slowed down for any given class. For individual students who might find themselves needing some extra time and attention, I will be starting before and/or after school tutoring in the coming weeks. Whenever a date is planned, I will make an announcement in class as well as post it to the class site's announcements page.
Now onto the math! We wrapped up our work on exponents, powers, and roots for the moment, though it will pop up again when we get to scientific notation as well as comparing and ordering rational numbers later in the term. All classes then moved onto integers. For most of the 7H students, this is a review topic (meaning not tested in Math 8 SOL on its own) but needed to for working with order of operations (a tested Math 8 SOL topic); for the MSM2 students integers were introduced last year and we are now building on that knowledge with integer computation this year. As previously mentioned, I felt that in addition to the extra time spent with Chromebooks this week, students needed a bit more time with integers, so things have been slowed down and things have been pushed back a little. The 7H students for the most part do not really need extra time with integers, so the quiz covering both square roots and integers was only pushed back to Monday. These students also have a mini-project they are working on about famous mathematicians, which we'll start presenting in class on Tuesday before we move onto order of operations.
My two MSM2 classes are at slightly different places at the moment. While I was able to cover all of the basic operations (i.e. addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) with my Period 5/6 class, my Period 9/10 class has only gotten through addition and subtraction. We'll see how things go on Monday, but I'm hoping that both classes will be ready to take the quiz on Tuesday, but again if it's necessary, there would be a change that will get posted immediately to the class calendars. These two classes also had to take the state's ARDT pre-assessment test today (Friday) and while the Period 5/6 class finished in enough time we could get a bit more work done in class, some students in the 9/10 class needed the entire block. Now that the pre-assessment is out of the way, we'll be able to get back to our regular math work, so I'm hoping we'll be able to get back on track at the beginning of the week.
I want to remind students that if they need any extra help before before/after school tutoring starts up, they should feel free to ask and I can schedule time during the weekly SOAR remediation and/or during lunch. Students should also feel free to send me a message via the site, Edmodo, or even by setting up a Google Doc we can communicate through if they find they need help or have a question outside of regular school hours. While I'm having a few issues with Edmodo at the moment (I'm an Edmodo Ambassador, which comes with some beta additions to my account, which seem to have created a few bugs), I am able to send and receive messages. Well, I'm going to go ahead and end things here for now. I hope everyone has an awesome weekend!