SOLs Covered: SOL 8.14 Evaluating Algebraic Expressions
Math Unit: 05 Order of Operations
Daily Agenda: October 10-14, 2022
Upcoming Assessments: Quiz 1.03 Order of Operations & Evaluating Expressions (A-Wed. 10/26; B-Thurs. 10/27)
Greetings, folks! I've got quite a few emails to send before I can head home for the weekend, so I'm going to jump straight into things. As I mentioned in last week's update, I decided to push the test back a little to reinforce the importance of writing out our work. I'm finding that this super techy generation thinks they can just type everything into the calculator and not write stuff down. I spoke with all of my classes and started by asking how many of them have ever sent text messages with major typos or weird autocorrections in it. They pretty much all raised their hands and when I pointed out the same thing can happen on their calculators, many started to understand how important it was. We then proceeded to go through the Unit 4 formative check in detail, with me writing out my work on my "paper" (a projected version of notebook paper) and I had them all write exactly what I was writing. I showed them that even with the things I was typing into our Desmos calculator, I still had things I was writing down. With anything I was putting into the calculator, I was always writing the original problem or number down before writing the answer or conversion on my projected paper. I even "turned my paper sideways" to show how you can use the columns created by the lines to ensure that place values are all lined up, which would then make it easier to compare the different values.
The kids were then tasked with applying this first to the quiz, which they were asked to finish or complete their retake on Monday/Tuesday, and then to the test on Wednesday/Thursday. Also as previously mentioned, the kids were bribed to put extra effort into showing their work with the opportunity to earn their first Class Dojo points. Between the promise of reward points and the chance at getting a better grade, most students really put a ton of effort into their work. Unfortunately, it didn't pay off completely for everyone as much as they'd hoped, but there were plenty that saw a drastic jump in their understanding and thus in their grade as well.
For those kids who put in tons of effort but didn't see the huge grade payout, they were majorly let down and some started to give up. To help them understand what happened better, I gave them an analogy and compared it to someone working out to try to lose weight; if you workout one time, you're not going to see a huge loss in weight overnight but instead have to consistently put in the work and effort and you'll see the payoff overtime. I also pointed out that all hope wasn't lost because while there isn't an automatic retake with tests the way there is for other things, students who failed the test have the chance to stay after school for remediation one day next week and then do a test retake the following afternoon. I'm in the midst of sending those emails out to parents/guardians, so be on the lookout for another email over the next few days if you see on the Tyler Portal that your child failed the test. Please also help me by talking with your student about the importance of writing out their work as shown in class as some students still refused to write anything out even with the extra examples and incentives.
My A-day students ended the week with a review of the order of operations, which will help in our upcoming units. While this isn't a new topic and though the kids can use the Desmos calculator on their work, I pointed out all the possible issues with only depending on the calculator, starting with our previous "text message typo" example and also showing how small little things specific to the Desmos calculator can affect your results. If you don't understand the correct order of operations, you wouldn't spot your "typos" until it's too late (i.e. getting the answer wrong). My B-day students will get this review on Monday, then we'll all review the real number properties before we jump into our first bit of algebra work for the year.
Well as always I've gotten carried away, but I always just want to ensure that everyone has the necessary information to keep up with what's happening in math class so that student's can carry that over at home to keep improving here in school. Still, I'm closing things out now so I can get back to my individual emails. I hope everyone has an amazing weekend!