SOLs Covered: 7.PFA.3 Equations
Math Topic: 06 Two-Step Equations
Daily Agenda: November 9-13, 2026
Upcoming Assessments: Unit 3 Expressions & Equations (Wed. 11/18)
Important Note: Schools closed for fall break Wed. 11/25-Fri. 11/27
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Greetings! Before jumping into this week's math happenings, I want to start by requesting that families look over grades as we already have six grades in the grade book for this new term, but students have either gotten a little too lax in their work or they're trying to avoid the "late fee" in hopes of saving their PBIS points for the fun stuff instead. Thus some students are already putting themselves at risk academically, but it's not too late to turn it around and the sooner they do, the easier they will find everything as they will have an easier time catching up with just a few assignments to tackle and they will also better understand what we are covering in class.
The most effective way to study and review math is to DO math. While we have some terms they can study and various notes they can review, math is a subject that is best improved through practice. I've compared it to sports or working out when talking with the students before. You can read about a sport or an exercise, but it's not going to help you perform better than practicing it and you would likely lose the game the next time you play. They can read over the notes, look at the published answer keys, even watch the provided videos, but they will likely never see the exact same question on the next assessment and have a greater chance of failing that assessment if they haven't tried to work through a problem on their own. Please help me by encouraging the kids to get their extra practice in before next week's "big game" (aka the first unit summative of the term).
Now onto this week's math content. We've been continuing our work with our algebra unit, but we've moved past modeling with manipulatives. Most of the students have done well thus far with grasping the topic and it's showing in their work but as I said above, some students have fallen behind in their work. I want to help clear up confusion, but if they do not turn in their assignments and aren't asking questions in class, I can't clear up any misconceptions and correct their errors. Students who are actively engaged are asking great questions though and are showing a deeper understanding of equations than I've seen in students in awhile, making me an incredibly proud teacher. There are some struggles with identifying the correct properties though, but this is one of those rare areas that students could do a little extra reviewing of the vocabulary in order to improve, but this should include looking at examples. Practice will still help with this and I've included multiple sites they can use specifically for this part of the standard on the SOL page for this topic (reminder that these are always included in the page that starts every Canvas module for my class). We'll keep working on this in class while practicing our equations at the beginning of next week.
I'm going to wrap things up here as I still have a bit of grading to complete before I call it a day but as always, please reach out if you have any questions. I hope everyone has an amazing weekend!