SOLs Covered: 6.NS.3 Exponents & Perfect Squares
Math Unit: 10 Exponents & Perfect Squares
Daily Agenda: March 3-7, 2025
Upcoming Assessments: SUM Quiz 10 Exponents & Roots (Tues. 3/11)
Good afternoon! I still have some grading and planning to do before I can officially wrap up this week, so I'm going to try to keep this update fast. As I'd promised the kids, we wrapped up the quiz for the last unit and had some time for catching up on any missing/incomplete work on Monday. We then spent the rest of the week working on their introduction to exponents and perfect squares. Most students were exposed to the term "exponent" in 5th grade as they were briefly introduced to order of operations last year, however they only had very simple questions with only multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction (also only with whole numbers). While we do not cover order of operations in 6th grade math, they'll continue exploring it in the next two years but will include many of the topics we've covered this year, including this new unit.
Unlike all my previous years of teaching middle school math, the kids will be allowed to use the calculator for this unit as the 2023 standards that we are now working with predominately focuses on them learning the patterns that exponents create, with special emphasis put on perfect squares and powers of ten. Again those topics will be further expanded upon in future years, so we're just laying the foundation for it this year. The kids have been doing really well this unit and we'll be reviewing on Monday before taking the quiz on Tuesday.
The quiz will be the last summative grade for the third quarter and next week's ALEKS PMA will be the last formative grade (grades for the 11th unit will go onto the final report card), so things are winding down for this term. Again, I'd like to ask for families' support in nudging the kids to do what they can to improve their grades. Many kids still haven't taken advantage of the opportunity to redo the quizzes nor have they attempted the extra credit. Others still have one or more missing assignments, predominately the weekly ALEKS PMAs. Everything can still be turned in for full credit, so please help encourage the kids to do what they can to finish the term strong!
That should cover the highlights but as always, please feel free to email if you have any questions or concerns. Have a great weekend!