Math 7H Blocks 1 & 2
SOLs Covered: 7.1 Negative Exponents, Powers of Ten, & Scientific Notation; 8.1 Compare & Order Real Numbers
Math Unit: 05 Comparing & Ordering Real Numbers
Daily Agenda: September 27-30, 2021 & October 1, 2021
Upcoming Assessments: Quiz 1.04 Order of Operations & Evaluating Expressions (Mon. 10/11)
MSM2 Block 4
SOLs Covered: 7.1 Negative Exponents, Powers of Ten, & Scientific Notation; 8.1 Compare & Order Real Numbers
Math Unit: 05 Comparing & Ordering Real Numbers
Daily Agenda: September 27-30, 2021 & October 1, 2021
Upcoming Assessments: Quiz 1.04 Order of Operations & Evaluating Expressions (Mon. 10/11)
Greetings! It's been another busy, fun-filled week of math and I'm honestly a little worn out today and will thus keep this brief... probably... I think you've all come to realize I do have a tendency to get carried away sometimes!
In regards to ALEKS this week, this is just a reminder that we kept this week as a "catch-up on ALEKS week" so kids still have the current 30-topics goal. I'll be back to just updating that grade on Mondays from this point moving forward, but parents and guardians can always ask their child to show them their ALEKS Timeline (not the Pie Chart) to see how many topics they've completed for any given week. Many students surpassed the goal this week, so up to 5 points will be added as extra credit and the kids will be rewarded with additional Lambie Points for anything after that.
A few of the kids have really gotten into the idea of earning and saving up those Lambie Points, so I told them that in addition to all the things I told them earlier in the year could earn them points, they can also complete Math Challenges (an announcement for which has been posted to each of the Canvas class pages) as well as send in submissions for our various monthly social media celebrations (currently that would be Hispanic/Latine Heritage Month through October 15th and Italian-American Heritage Month and National Disabilities Employment Awareness Month throughout all of October).
In regards to our regular math work for the week, we added onto our work with scientific notation to include comparing and order of all types of real numbers. This is partially a review as the kids have done some form of this for awhile with fractions, decimals, and percents, but since we through in a few more types (scientific notation, imperfect squares, etc.) and also include negative values, it can get a little confusing at times. I was noticing that some of that confusion wasn't clearing up as I'd expected, so I updated our "Superheroes vs Villains" guide and created two new number line guides to help with this (first, second). These have helped most of the kids and the results from the quizzes have been overall really good today, but for those still struggling, please help me by encouraging them to write out their work (which should include them drawing out number lines, especially when including negative values) on the provided quiz paper rather than exclusively relying on the Desmos calculator. While the Desmos calculator is an amazing resource and I fully support its use, it's just one of many tools they should be utilizing and sometimes the simplest tools (old fashioned paper/pencil work) can be far more useful.
Well, that's just a smidge carried away, so I'll go ahead and wrap things up here. As always, please let me know if you have any questions. Hope you all have an amazing weekend!!!