SOLs Covered: 8.10 Composite Figures
Math Unit: 17 Composite Figures
Daily Agenda: March 13-17, 2023
Upcoming Assessments: Quiz 3.05 Geometric Transformations (A-Tues. 3/28; B-Wed. 3/29)
Happy Friday, folks! As you know, 8th graders started their first round of SOL testing this week with the writing SOL, which as I'm sure you can imagine makes for a long week. That being said I have to brag that I've seen some vast improvements in some of the kids approach to work this week. I'm not sure if it's a push from their parents/guardians due to my emails about grades (a huge thank you to those folks for the support!), if the talks I'm having with them have clicked, if it's just a sign of spring and getting out of a winter slump, or a combination of these. Either way, I'm both super happy and super proud! I'm still in the process of emailing folks, but please help me by checking grades on the Tyler system and encouraging the kids to take advantage of the various ways they have to improve upon their work: making up time on Edmentum for their Royal Block grade, redoing formative checks, completing the second-take on quizzes, correcting quizzes and tests for extra credit, completing the IXL extra credit. I'll follow up with calls if I don't hear back from folks, so if you can please respond to my email letting me know you got it and are aware of their grades, it would be greatly appreciated. I don't have planning on A-days and with meetings sometimes taking up at least part of my planning on B-days, it doesn't leave me with a ton of time for calls, so it would really help the whole process.
In regard to this week's math work, we wrapped up our work on composite figures the best we could working around this week's SOL testing. As previously mentioned, I did rework our calendar so that this upcoming Monday and Tuesday (March 20-21) are catch-up days, so students needing help wrapping up the formative checks, extra time for the quiz, or completing any previously missing assignment will have the whole block those days to do so. Students needing additional time or just wanting extra help from me are more than welcome to attend my Tuesday and Thursday morning help sessions. Students can start coming as early as 7AM, though I ask for a heads up (either telling me in class or the halls the day before or an email from the student or their parent/guardian) letting me know that they plan to attend. If students haven't arrived by 7:10AM and I haven't heard from anyone ahead of time, than I use that time to take care of other things, so I might not be in the room.
For this most recent topic (composite figures), students can also work from home on things that might not at first have an obvious connection to help them improve their understanding of the concept. For some students, they struggle with the work because they have a hard time breaking down the composite figures into the more basic shapes that created them. I believe this is because a lot of kids from the "Alpha Generation" haven't spent as much time doing some of the things we did as kids, like playing with blocks, playing with tangrams, doing puzzles, or solving mazes. Again, the connection might not be obvious at first, but when you think about how your brains had to manipulate those things to come up with an image of what you were working to build or solve, you start to see that connection. For kids who spent little time on these activities, they never really developed that skill. I have a few links in the unit module on Canvas in the 'Extra Practice" section that have a few pages they can go and try some of these things, such as this tangram puzzle page. And side note that in case you weren't aware, the "Extra Practice" section is always included in every module and contain a variety of things, ranging from extra practice assignments to math games to things like the tangrams that don't always have an obvious connection but I promise do help improve their math understanding. There are tons of other sites linked on my math Portaportal and because I'm just a nerd who loves learning and technology, I also have my "school" Portaportal, which cover every subject plus a few additional resources.
Well, I've carried on long enough, but as always, please let me know if you have any questions. Hope you all have an amazing weekend!