SOLs Covered: 7.NS.1 Powers of Ten & Scientific Notation
Math Unit: 02 Powers of Ten & Scientific Notation
Daily Agenda: September 2-5, 2025
Upcoming Assessments: MAPS Testing (Mon. 9/8-Tues. 9/9); Unit 1 Exponents & Powers Summative (Fri. 9/12 or Mon. 9/15)
Greetings! Having back-to-school night last night, which means I was here for over 12 hours yesterday, I'm currently one exhausted teacher in need of a nap, so this week's update will be on the short-and-sweet side. We came back from the long weekend and did a little review of perfect squares and exponents in general as a lead in to our new topic, powers of ten. It's not a completely new topic to the kids as we covered powers of ten with positive exponents last year, but this year we add on negative exponents. This can be difficult for some kids at first to grasp as they expect the negative exponents to create negative numbers when the reality is that they create smaller values, a.k.a. fractions and decimals.
We had several days of practice with the before we merged the skill with scientific notation. This is a completely new number format for them, but it can be a difficult one for students. After teaching it for so many years, I've come up with some techniques to show the work along with a little twist on the topic. Kids tend to get confused on which way to move the decimal when converting either from standard notation to scientific notation or vice versa because they get the rule for the direction mixed up. My trick for keeping it straight is actually to refer to the numbers as either "Ant-Man numbers" (because he shrinks down really small) or "Hulk numbers" (because he gets bigger when he's angry) and even kids who maybe don't know the comics or haven't seen any of the Marvel movies are still familiar enough with the characters that it just seems to click. Each block is in a slightly different place with the work, but all seem to be doing well with it thus far with this approach.
We'll pick the work back up next week, but only after students have completed the first round of MAP testing. It's been awhile since we've completed MAP testing for math in Chesterfield, but it is returning and taking the place of the state's fall and winter SGA SOL testing. While I would prefer less testing (and thus more time for actually teaching/learning), I do prefer the data I can get from MAP testing to the state's reports, so that's a bonus, but it will be interrupting the unit and I'm thus not 100% set on the date for our first graded classroom assessment as they might need some additional review time due to the interruption. If all goes well, we'll be doing that next Friday.
Well, that got a little longer than I originally set out for, but many of you are already use to that from last year. As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to email. I hope everyone has an amazing weekend!