From the Math Room
Weather has been rough but the sickness that is going on right now is brutal! But....learning must continue.
6th graders just finished up a chapter covering percents. This is a hard concept for 6th graders to understand because they have not experienced this topic much in their life yet. Feel free to share with them when you buy something on sale how you knew what the price was going to be, or how you decided how much tip to leave. The more real life connections they can have the easier math class is to understand. We have now moved on to Algebraic Expressions and are working with unknown values and variables.
7th graders have also been working on percents but they get a little deeper into how we use percents in real life. They are able to estimate with percents like 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, and 50%. Percent of change was also a topic we discussed to see price mark-up and mark-down in the business world. Commission was a math vocab word that the students where not familiar with. We talked about different jobs that are paid on commission and how to figure it, but feel free to give your experiences with commission based pay. Computing simple interest will be the last thing we talk about in this chapter. I will try to give the students advice on the importance of saving money and not buying using a credit card.
8th graders just tested over transformations which is moving or changing shapes based on certain rules. Geometry as a whole is a weakness for our students so we will revisit this chapter in the future. Volume/surface area is the next chapter we will be covering in depth. Currently the students are researching foldables and interactive notebooking ideas to help them gain foundational information before starting the chapter.
Algebra 1 students have advanced through being able to graph one equation to now being able to graph 2 inequalities and shade the solutions. This may not sound like much of an advancement but it is. It takes many steps to progress through this topic. They have also been solving systems using 4 different methods; graphing calculator, graphing by hand, substitution and elimination. We will soon be changing gears and working with exponents and polynomials.
We have also started our spiral review to start getting ready for the MAP/EOC test. Students 7-9th will have a Study Island assignment to complete each week.
As always, feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns.