Post date: Oct 2, 2016 5:21:53 PM
Math 7H Period 1
SOLs Covered: 8.2 The Real Number System
Math Unit: #04 Real Number System
CCPS Student Digital Resource: The Real Number System
Upcoming Assessments: Evaluating Expressions Quiz (Thurs. 10/6)
MSM2 Period 3 & 4
SOLs Covered: 7.16, 8.15c Properties of Real Numbers
Math Unit: #03 Properties
CCPS Student Digital Resource: Properties of Real Numbers
Upcoming Assessments: Order of Operations Quiz (Fri. 10/7)
Hello folks! This week's update will be a quick one since I'm busy working on a few techy things for the kids (setting up some new accounts, creating Vocab.com lists, etc.). Without further ado, let's get into this past week's happenings.
The honors class learned about the real number system, which wasn't entirely new to them as they've worked with each type of number before, but they've never looked at the system as a whole before. Overall, they took to it fairly easily, only having a little confusion with how to handle unsimplified numbers. After a little extra review on that, the kids did an awesome job on the quiz. We also reviewed the first four units before testing on Thursday and Friday, again with excellent results.
The MSM2 classes wrapped up their work on properties before taking their quiz on Tuesday. We then started our test review, which encompassed going over the first two quizzes in greater detail. The test was started on Thursday, with some kids finishing on Friday. Since the results were so mixed, I've told the kids they can complete an error analysis for "free" (meaning they do not need to spend Lambie Points on it as is usually the case with summatives); this is open even to the students who did well the first go round. One of the issues I'm seeing regarding most of the lower scores on assessments in the MSM2 classes is that too many of the students are not showing much work, which is having a huge negative effect on their results. Because of this, I'm now requiring that a majority of their classwork be completed "old school" in their math notebooks rather than in the digital Google Drive copies of the assignments and students will not be allowed to submit their assessments until work is shown for each question. Another part of the struggle is that some students still struggle with the foundational skills like basic computation, particularly multiplication and division. I've set up a new account for the kids on a site called Sumdog that allows students to practice these skills as well as some our middle school standards. Please encourage the kids to work on improving in both areas, showing all of their work and practicing both the basic skills and the new skills.
I'm going to close things out here but as always, please feel free to email with any questions. I hope everyone has an excellent week!