SOLs Covered: All Math 7
Math Topic: 16 SOL Review; 17 End-of-Year
Daily Agenda: May 11-15, 2026
Upcoming Assessments: Math 7 SOL Retake (Tues. 5/19); Math Creative Writing assignment (due Fri. 5/22); Last day to turn in math work (Fri. 5/22)
Good afternoon! As I'm sure you've heard by now, the Canvas hack that occurred May 7th has had a big impact on things for us. The county shutdown the feature allowing us to sync grades from Canvas into ParentVUE/StudentVUE, which is how I've been doing grades the past 5 years. This isn't something you need to worry about as I can manual update grades, but this does mean it takes a bit more time to update grades each day. I am still updating each afternoon, though this week I did fall behind a bit between figuring out the work-around and also running remediation sessions for those students eligible to retake the Math 7 SOL test next week, but grades will be 100% updated before I leave today, so what you see in the grade book by tomorrow morning will be reflective of what has been turned in at this point.
Also in regards to grades, at this point grades for my class cannot decrease, only increase. This means should I student choose to do no more work, what you see will be what's on their report card for the year, so please help me by encouraging the students who have failing grades for the term and/or year to complete their missing work and correct anything that didn't originally earn a 100%. There will still be one more grade (a creative writing assignment with a math focus), but the intention behind that is to keep the students engaged, give them a creative outlet and some choice as there will be several different prompts they can pick from, push them to see math in another light, and potentially give them a boost up to another letter grade.
As previously mentioned, I've been working with those students eligible for the retake while those not retaking worked on finishing work for my class. Some students have completed everything they can for my class at this point, so those students have been allowed to focus on improving their grades in other classes. There are also some who have been permitted to switch away from math if they are passing for me but need to work on another subject in order to pass that for the year. While obviously I would love for all my students to have the best grade possible for my class, I feel it's more important to make sure they are progressing each year, so passing for me but failing in others and thus not being able to move onto 8th will not do them any good in the long term.
As we're wrapping up the year (just two weeks left, folks!), please don't hesitate to reach out if you need support for your child in any way. In my final update, I'll share math resources that can be used to help keep kids from suffering the "summer slide" as they call it, but if there's anything else you might need, just let me know. While I might not have the answers myself, I can check with others in the building and get back to you with my findings.
Well, I've got to get back to grading if I want to keep my promise of having it 100% updated but as always, please reach out if you have any questions. Again, a reminder that I do not respond to emails outside of working hours in efforts to establish a more healthy work/life balance, but I will get back to you on Monday. I hope everyone has an amazing weekend!