Math 7H Blocks 1 & 2
SOLs Covered: 7.12 & 8.17 Multi-Step Equations; 7.13 & 8.18 Solving & Graphing Inequalities
Math Unit: 11 Multi-Step Equations; 12 Inequalities
Daily Agenda: November 8-12, 2021
Upcoming Assessments: Quiz 2.02 Inequalities (Wed. 11/17)
MSM2 Block 4
SOLs Covered: 7.12 & 8.17 Multi-Step Equations; 7.13 & 8.18 Solving & Graphing Inequalities
Math Unit: 11 Multi-Step Equations; 12 Inequalities
Daily Agenda: November 8-12, 2021
Upcoming Assessments: Quiz 2.02 Inequalities (Wed. 11/17)
Good afternoon, everyone. As I'm sure you can imagine if you had a chance to read Dr. Strittmatter's email from last night, today has been a difficult day for many of us at the Nest, so I'm just going to stick to the basics and then head out to go hug on my family for a bit while I continue to process the recent lose of the incomparable Martha Stanley, the EDMS drama teacher until this year.
Our week started with us wrapping up our work with multi-step equations with the quiz taking place on Wednesday. While many of the kids did well, some are still struggling a bit. Some of those struggles stem from forgetting the order of the steps and for this issue, I reminded the kids that they can use the algebra card we made last week along with their other notes and materials; with enough repetition over time, they should have the steps memorized by the time we get to the SOL test. Some students are struggling with when to use the same operation versus when to use opposite operations. For this, we did some additional practice with heavy emphasis on my suggestion of drawing a line down the equation from the equal sign. This is to remind students that for steps 1 and 2 (when we aren't "crossing the line") we stick with the same operation (ex. when combining like terms, if we're combining 9x and -3x, we would stick with 9x-3x to get 6x), but when we get to steps 3 and 4 (when we're "in the game" and "crossing the line") we use opposite operations (ex. when we're moving variables to one side, if we're trying to move -3x, we would instead +3x on both sides). This cleared up a lot of the issues, but even then we continued the practice by checking our solutions in the Desmos calculator.
Students are reminded that they should go back and use these suggestions for their second attempt on the quiz if they haven't already done so, especially since I used some of the quiz questions for the additional practice. Yes, this means I straight up gave them the answers to some of their quiz questions, yet I still have a few students how haven't taken advantage of that fact and some still haven't even submitted their first attempt, so please help me by encouraging all the kids to take full advantage of these opportunities to improve upon their grade.
Thursday and Friday were spent introducing algebraic inequalities. This is essentially a continuation of what we've been doing as the process for solving is pretty much the same, just with a few additions. To "sweeten" the work a little, we had mini Oreos and pretzel sticks for one of our activities today. As I told the kids, we don't really need the goodies to do the work, but it helps the kids remember when to have an open circle (a twisted open Oreo) or a closed circle (a closed, whole cookie) and which direction to point the arrow (the pretzel sticks). Plus, who doesn't like to have a small treat once your work is done every once and awhile, right? We'll be continuing this work next week, but I've encouraged the kids to practice with some of our assignments over the weekend.
I still got a little carried away with my math talk above, so I'm going to wrap things up here. Before I close this out, I really want to thank all of my students for being so kind and understanding today. I'm not sure if they were all aware of our school's lose or not, but they could tell that some of us were obviously feeling a lot today and all of my own kiddos at least went out of their way to be their very best. It's just one example of why I love my job so much. These kids are amazing and no matter what life throws our way, they keep me focusing and moving ahead. I hope you all know how much I love and adore your kiddos. Thank you to all you parents and guardians for raising such amazing human beings!
I hope everyone has a calm and restful weekend and that if possible, you all take some time to love and appreciate each other this weekend. Take care!