Post date: Jan 22, 2021 8:13:35 PM
MSM2 Block 1
SOLs Covered: 8.12-13 Data Analysis with Scatterplots & Box Plots
Math Unit: 14 Data Analysis (Scatterplots & Box Plots)
Daily Agenda: Jan. 19-22, 2021
Upcoming Assessments: 2.04 Data Analysis Quiz (Mon. 2/1/21)
Math 7H Blocks 2 & 3
SOLs Covered: 8.12-13 Data Analysis with Scatterplots & Box Plots
Math Unit: 14 Data Analysis (Scatterplots & Box Plots)
Daily Agenda: Jan. 19-22, 2021
Upcoming Assessments: 2.04 Data Analysis Quiz (Mon. 2/1/21)
Howdy! Can you believe we're almost halfway through the school year! We've got just one week left in the first semester! That being said, I'd like to again encourage the kids to take advantage of every chance they have to improve upon their final grade for the term. I decided to wrap up grades for the quarter with the last unit (13 Relations & Functions), so the grades you currently see in StudentVUE/ParentVUE are what you can expect on the report card if the kids don't turn anything else in at this point. While some students are probably happy with their current grade (and rightfully so!), almost everyone could still improve upon their final grade with a little extra work. Any missing or incomplete assignment can still be turned in along with quiz corrections and the extra credit for this term (via ALEKS) has been extended again, everything being due by the end of the day on Thursday, January 28th so that I can get it added to the gradebook prior to sending grades on Friday, January 29th (which is now a full teacher workday per the last school board meeting). Again I'd like to ask parents and guardians to help me by encouraging the kids to take advantage of this final opportunity to improve upon their final grades.
Aside from reminders to take care of the things mentioned above, we got started on our next unit, for which all of the grades will be going onto the next term since the quiz won't take place until February 1st and to also allow makeup time as needed. Before talking about the unit work, I'd like to make sure everyone is aware that I'll be changing things up a little in regards to grades in the second semester. In an effort to help students with their grades in this difficult year, I've been including the assignments I've been doing with them during their live, recorded classes and thus going over all the answers. Unfortunately there's a high number of students who aren't doing even those and thus it's having a negative impact on their overall grade, making it difficult to turn their grade around the more they let the missing assignments pile up. This might seem like the natural consequence, but teachers are being encouraged to go back to the drawing board, so for the most part I will no longer be including these in the grades (there may be an exception here or there of course) and formative assignment grades will be coming from the things they work on independently during their async time almost exclusively. Answer keys are still provided to allow them to check their work and yes, I already know that there will be students who will inevitably take the easy way out and use those instead of doing the work on their own, but I've tried to make sure each class understands the danger in doing this. While students might get decent grades in the formative assignment category (only 20% of their overall grade) by using the answer keys, they will struggle when it comes to the summative quizzes (60%) and formative assessments (20%), which could result in failing. For this reason, it's imperative that students only use the keys to check their work and obviously it's still important that the kids complete the things I do with them during the live class to ensure they're building their knowledge base/overall understanding, both for current (7th grade) and future math work.
TL;DR - It's important that the kids do all their work and put forth full effort!
In regards to our math work, we started our data analysis unit. We started with just a review of all the graphs they should have learned in the past, which includes the histograms they should have learned about last year but might have missed out on because of schools closing last spring. The rest of the week was spent on introducing one of the two graphs we cover in 7th grade, scatterplots, which goes by several other names depending on where you are or what programs you're using. While most of what we need to cover with scatterplots is just being able to analyze them, I also took a little time to teach the kids a new tech skill, how to use Google Sheets to create their scatterplot (called a "scatter chart" on Google Sheets) and how you can then export/import into other applications (this might come in handy for future reports or science fair projects!). We'll continue our work with another new graph (box plots) next week.
Well, that should MORE than cover everything, but as always, please let me know if you have any questions. Hope you all have an amazing weekend!!!