Post date: Apr 30, 2021 6:58:24 PM
MSM2 Block 1
SOLs Covered: 7.5 & 8.7 Surface Area & Volume; 7.8 & 8.8 Geometric Transformations: Reflections, Translations, & Dilations
Math Unit: 22 Surface Area & Volume; 23 Geometric Transformations
Daily Agenda: April 26-30, 2021
Upcoming Assessments: 4.04 Geometric Transformations Quiz (Wed. 5/5/21)
Math 7H Blocks 2 & 3
SOLs Covered: 7.5 & 8.7 Surface Area & Volume; 7.8 & 8.8 Geometric Transformations: Reflections, Translations, & Dilations
Math Unit: 22 Surface Area & Volume; 23 Geometric Transformations
Daily Agenda: April 26-30, 2021
Upcoming Assessments: 4.04 Geometric Transformations Quiz (Wed. 5/5/21)
¡Buenas tardes! I had to cover another teacher's class during my planning block today, so I'll be keeping this pretty straightforward (and hopefully fast, but you all know by now that I have a tendency to get carried away) so that I can take care of all the things I would normally have done during my planning.
The week started off with the continuation of our work on surface area and volume. The kids were introduced to pyramids (square-based pyramids only at this level) and cones. The kids overall handled both shapes fairly well, but there were a few who struggled when the information for a dimension was missing. When this happens, you have to apply the Pythagorean theorem to find the missing dimension. While we covered this already several weeks ago, I believe the kids were a little thrown by the merging of the two topics. To help with this, I showed and highly encouraged the kids to draw out the hidden right triangle embedded inside any pyramid or cone. I have this page of notes for this aspect that I gave out to the in-person students and offered to make available to any virtual student who might be interested, but since I can only print in grayscale, I do encourage folks who can print in color to do so and for those who can't to color over the dimensions in a similar manner as it generally helps the kids identify what information was given and what's left to find a little easier. Wednesday had us taking the quiz on the unit, though I still have a fairly big handful of students who still haven't submitted the quiz. Some of these students still also owe the last quiz, so I'm again asking parents and guardians to help me out by pushing the kids to take care of any missing work but especially the quizzes.
Thursday we started our last new topic of the year! The kids were super excited to hear that (a little less excited to hear we'd move into SOL review after we wrap this up) and so far they've taken well to the topic, which is geometric transformations. The last time they changed the standards for math, they removed rotations from the middle school curriculum, so we only cover basic reflections (only over the axes), translations, and dilations. The hardest part for the kids so far hasn't been the math but dealing with the digital aspects for something that is traditionally done predominately on paper. For this reason, I've offered paper copies for any ungraded assignment to any student interested, the kids just need to let me know if they'd like a paper copy. Since I can't collect and grade papers, the three graded assignments still need to be done digitally, but kids could take a picture of work done on paper and submit that if the digital is just a little too tricky for them. So far none of the kids have had issues with the two graded assignments we've already covered, but I'm happy to help and/or provide the paper copies as needed.
We'll be continuing the topic at the beginning of next week and as previously mentioned, we'll then begin our SOL review. There won't be any assignment grades for the review but I'll instead be taking formative assessment grades for what we call our "SOL mini-quizzes," which when combined are equivalent to a practice SOL test. As I've told the kids, everyone will go through the review even if they are opting out of the SOL test this year as everything covered will still be foundational knowledge they'll need to build off of in future math courses. To go along with the SOL review, I hope to have the ALEKS extra credit opportunity set up and available by mid-week next week, so be on the lookout for that as well.
Well, I've yet again gotten carried away with my writing (TL;DR, we did lots of math and we're almost finished!), so I'll wrap things up here. As always, please feel free to reach out if you have any questions. Hope you all have an amazing weekend!