SOLs Covered: SOL 8.14 & 8.17 Solving Multi-Step Equations
Math Unit: 10 One- & Two-Step Equations & 11 Multi-Step Equations
Daily Agenda: December 5-9, 2022
Upcoming Assessments: Quiz 2.02 Multi-Step Equations (A-Wed. 12/14; B-Thurs. 12/15)
Happy Friday, folks! Before we get into this week's math happenings, I've had a few folks reach out about tutoring, so I wanted to remind everyone of some of the options available. I'm unfortunately no longer able to offer after school tutoring, but I do ensure that I have time for before school tutoring/make-up work on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays starting at 7AM. Students or their grownups are asked to email first (can even be morning of) to let me know the student will be coming in early for help just to ensure I'm available immediately in the classroom and not making copies or the like. The school also has it's own tutoring program for many subjects, including Pre-Algebra. The flier with days and times can be found here and folks can sign up via this link. Students and/or their grownups can also email at anytime and while I might not be able to respond immediately, I will as soon as possible and if it's something that can't easily be answered in email format, I can usually send resources to help including videos and at the very least I'll be prepared to help the student when they're next in class. There are also usually additional resources linked in my Daily Agenda slides and included in my unit folders. For our current algebra work, I also have a document full of links (predominately Khan Academy videos) that was shared by a former colleague; that teacher was a HS Algebra 1 teacher, so some of the links further into the document aren't things we'll be doing this year, but the first half covers the basics of algebra, which we do cover, and the whole thing would be a great resource to save for next year when the kids move onto HS Algebra 1 next year.
Now in regards to this week's math work, I wanted to start off by ensuring that everyone is aware of the current requirements for Edmentum, a new site being utilized by the county for both math and English this year. Students are expected to work on Edmentum in their Royal Block classes, but the work for those classes get graded by their math and English teachers. At the start of the year, the grade came from the practice assignments they were being provided, but now the grade comes from the work being done via their Edmentum learning path. Students access Edmentum via the Class Link portal and they are expected to complete a minimum of 15 minutes of actively working each week. The site does distinguish between the time students just have the page open without working versus actually completing tasks (some students seemed to think they could just leave the tab open but then switch over to a game and still get credit... yeah, not so much). There are many students behind on this and since I can't be in their Royal Block classes to ensure they have the proper amount of time there, I give them a little time in my own class to work, but I also asked Mrs. Jackson (the administrator in charge of math) to get the county to open up the settings to allow the kids to work on it outside of school hours. As I've told the kids, I'm now running my reports on Mondays for the previous week, so kids can work in the evening and weekends to get their time completed and they can even make-up time. Making up the time just means the kids would add an extra 15 minutes for each week that is missing, though it doesn't have to be all made up at once. For example, if a student currently owed two previous weeks, they could do 30 minutes this week and another 30 next week to be fully caught up and could then return to just 15 minutes each week after the break.
Edmentum is just a tiny part of weekly math though, so let's move onto the big stuff. This week that big stuff was a big undertaking for the kids as we started solving multi-step equations. There were some big struggles at first and I could see the kids just weren't getting it at first, so I mentally went back to the drawing board and added a few extra tweaks to my approach, which included double the repetition of the steps to hopefully get those steps solid in their memories. The trickiest part of multi-step equations is the fact that no two problems will be solved the exact same way, but I've found that just sticking to four basic steps along with a few other bits (all found on this "card") is the easiest approach. In addition to these steps and extra bits, I've also had the kids start circling/highlighting all the variables, boxing the areas requiring distributive property, and circling the like terms we're combining. I scrapped some of our in-class practice assignments so we could spend some extra time practicing just straight up solving equations, but the kids should still try those assignments as home practice. For example, one of the assignments I ended up skipping in all but the 1A class was the properties review as it is no longer an SOL-tested topic in Math 8 (pre-algebra) but as it will help get them ahead next year, it is still great practice and it does show them additional problems that have been properly worked out. We'll do a little review of the properties as well as some more modeling and translating questions on Monday/Tuesday before the kids do their formative check and we review for the quiz, but I'd like to encourage the kids to do some basic solving practice this weekend to keep the steps/routine fresh in their minds.
Before I close things out, I'll be sending emails and making calls next week to the grownups of students currently failing or at risk of failing, but as many of those students are simply behind on work and have missing assignments, I ask that everyone check grades on Tyler. On the grade page, please click to see the assignment details so you can see individual assignment grades. If you see a zero, the assignment/assessment is missing and needs to be completed. You should also see little arrows the left side of the page that will open up any comments I've added, which will include things like reminders to redo assignments and/or to complete quiz/test corrections to improve the grade. There are currently two etra credit opportunities available as well. The first is the 12 Days of Mathmas that will be applied to the quiz category and is due by next Friday (12/16); the second is the Hour of Code that is being applied to the classwork category. Folks can email with any questions, but again I'll be sending updates of my own next week for those students currently failing or at risk.
Well, this week's update is even longer than usual, so I'll wrap things up here. As always, I hope everyone has an amazing weekend!