Post date: Oct 7, 2018 4:57:42 PM
MSM2 Periods 1 & 2
SOLs Covered: 7.1 & 8.1 Negative Exponents & Scientific Notation
Math Unit: 4 Negative Exponents, Powers of 10, & Scientific Notation
Daily Agenda: Oct. 1-5, 2018
Upcoming Assessments: 1.03 Powers of 10 & Scientific Notation Quiz (Mon. 10/8); Midterm Test 1 (Wed. 10/10-Thurs. 10/11)
Math 7H Period 4
SOLs Covered: 7.1 & 8.1 Negative Exponents & Scientific Notation
Math Unit: 4 Negative Exponents, Powers of 10, & Scientific Notation
Daily Agenda: Oct. 1-5, 2018
Upcoming Assessments: 1.03 Powers of 10 & Scientific Notation Quiz (Mon. 10/8); Midterm Test 1 (Wed. 10/10-Thurs. 10/11)
Howdy, folks! We've made it to the halfway point of the first term! This means some of you will be receiving phone calls from teachers if your child has one or more classes for which s/he is currently receiving a D/F for the term. We share the job of calling so parents will receive one rather than multiple calls, so if your child currently has a D/F in my class, the call might come from another one of their teachers. If that's the case, please feel free to contact me with any questions, but for most of my students a D/F in my class is generally because the student hasn't been completing assignments. Please look over the ParentVUE grades; anything marked with a note for Missing or Incomplete can easily be made up for full credit using their Liberty Points for the "late fee" (refer to my earlier emails regarding Liberty Points for further details).
Regarding normal class happenings this week, after starting the week with a quick review and the quiz on the real number system, we moved onto powers of ten which eventually segued into working on scientific notation. The kids have generally done very well with this unit, but there are some common mistakes that the kids still occasionally make. While working with powers of ten, I made a point of telling the kids to not think of the exponent as the number of zeros but the number of place values instead. This is because they generally take this idea into the next portion of the unit (scientific notation), where the "rule" they tried to make for themselves works against them. We did a lot of practice together on it, so most have gotten past that speed bump, but I'll give them an extra reminder tomorrow during our pre-quiz review session. The other area that generally stumps kids is mixing up which direction to move the decimal when converting manually. To help with this, I've drawn on some of my "epic nerdiness" to serve as an easy reminder; be sure to ask the kids about how Ant-Man (shrinks down to tiny decimals), Captain America ("normal" numbers where the decimal doesn't move), and the Hulk (Incredibly large numbers) have saved the day! We'll be quizzing on the unit tomorrow then reviewing everything we've covered thus far before taking a midterm test on Wednesday.
Well, I'm wrapping things up here but as always, feel free to email with any questions. Just a heads up that ParentVUE will be offline for routine maintenance starting at 5PM on October 19th until sometime early the next morning. I hope everyone has a great week!