Post date: Jan 15, 2021 7:47:03 PM
MSM2 Block 1
SOLs Covered: 7.10 & 8.14-16 Relations & Functions
Math Unit: 13 Relations & Functions
Daily Agenda: Jan. 11-15, 2021
Upcoming Assessments: 2.04 Data Analysis Quiz (TBD)
Math 7H Blocks 2 & 3
SOLs Covered: 7.10 & 8.14-16 Relations & Functions
Math Unit: 13 Relations & Functions
Daily Agenda: Jan. 11-15, 2021
Upcoming Assessments: 2.04 Data Analysis Quiz (TBD)
Greetings! Before getting into the nitty-gritty of the week, I'd like to ask parents and guardians to please continue helping me by encouraging the kids to finish their missing assignments. I've done well over half the work with the kids during the live, recorded class sessions and even provide the answer keys for those assignments to the kids by pasting the link into the chat, yet so many of these assignments are even still left missing. There are students with missing quizzes and the one big formative assessment (12 Days of Mathmas) despite repeated requests for them to get the work done, which includes my offer of help. When we have extra time for asynchronous work at the end of class, I always offer to stay back and offer help and I offer additional time every Wednesday for "open office hours" (currently set for 10:15-11:30AM) when students can just hop onto my open meet to ask any questions or get any help they need, but I only have the same small group of kids who stay/show for that extra offer assistance. I want to help them (I'm sometimes literally even begging!), but I can only do so much and if I don't receive at least a little effort from the student, it won't get them anywhere.
To help students improve upon their grade no matter where they currently stand, I've reopened the ALEKS (McGraw-Hill in the Rapid Identity Backpack) extra credit opportunity. Very few students took advantage of it over the four weeks it was previously open, but I'm hopeful that as we get closer to the end of the term/semester that more students will be motivated to take advantage of the chance. It will be available through Monday, January 25th now. Students who made previous attempts can still go back and complete any portions the left unanswered and retry on the questions they missed. For those students who are already at a 100A+ or higher (and there are several), you can still earn points but anything that pushes them past the 100 boundary (the maximum grade that can be given on the report card) will get converted to Lambie Points (tracked via Class Dojo), which might come in handy if we end up back in some form of "normal" school before the end of the year (and if you stay virtual, remember I still have items you can "buy" like the water bottle/laptop stickers!).
Now onto math! This week we wrapped up or relations and functions unit, which also sees us wrapping up our algebra work for the time being, which I know some of the kids are really happy about. After a little more work with slope-intercept form (y = mx + b) and graphing, we reviewed for our quiz on Tuesday using Blooket (fellow teachers, check it out! the kids LOVE it!!! some even ASK for homework!!!!!). The kids took their winter math MAP test on Wednesday, though I still have a few students who have not finished and some even started the test. The kids are reminded that they can get an additional formative assessment grade just for taking it (no matter the score!) and have the potential to earn up to three homework passes (or zeroes taken away if they already have missing assignments). Thursday was devoted to the quiz though as I previously mentioned, I sadly have students who still haven't taken it. Aside from a couple kids (most of whom have already made it up), I haven't been offered any reasons why these students haven't taken it, so please try to get this taken care of this weekend or at least reach out to me to let me know if something is going on that would prevent you from taking it.
Due to all the missing quizzes as well as some lower quiz scores from some students, Friday was turned into another catchup day. For those students who hadn't completed the quiz, they were immediately sent off to take it while the rest of us stayed in the meet to work on corrections together. I took this one step further this time by also adding in a bunch of different reminders on various test taking strategies. I went over the entire quiz and the whole thing was recorded, so kids who missed can email me and request the link to help with their own corrections or join me during office hours next week if they need further clarification. The email is necessary this time since I can't add the recording to the usual folder while I still have so many missing quizzes.
Well, that should cover everything and then some, so I'll close things out here. As always, please let me know if you have any questions. I hope you all have an amazing weekend!