Term 1 is half way complete.

As hard as it seems, we have completed 1/2 of our first term.  Progress Reports go home this Friday.  Students are beginning to understand how the Envisions/Pearson Realize program works.  For each lesson they have multiple examples and videos and then problems to work on that will "coach" them through the steps.  For each lesson they then complete the Lesson Quiz. A score of 80% allows them to move on to the next lesson.  We should complete Lessons 1-4 (Evaluating Square and Cube Roots) and 1-5 (Solving Equations with Square and Cube Roots) this week.

If students are not on our target lesson, they should be completing work at home.  Other than one Open Response question a week, their homework is to continue working on their lessons.  If connection online is a problem, I have also offered all students a workbook to use as they like.

Please let me know if you have any questions!

Envisions

We began work this week on the 8th grade Math curriculum using the Envisions program.  Students will be moving at their own pace.  We worked on notes for Lesson 1-1 Converting Repeating Decimals to Fractions together. 

Each lesson takes about 2 days.  For each lesson, students should -
                   Watch a video(es)
                   Take notes (either Mrs. Lasorsa's or their own)
                   Work through the MathXL practice problems
                   Take the Lesson Quiz (must pass with an 80% before moving on!)

Please ask your students what they are doing and where they are working. Monitoring their own progress is a new skill for many of them. 

Progress reports go home on Friday, September 30th.  In order to have an accurate grade we will be having a quiz and a notebook check on Monday, September 26th.  Students may use their notebooks while completing the quiz.

Please let me know if you have any questions or feedback!  Have a nice weekend!

Beginning of September...

It has been a wonderful two weeks getting to know students.  We have spent a lot of our time getting ready for the challenges of 8th grade Math.  My goal for this year is that all students leave this class knowing that they are "good at math" and can become better.

In order to do that, we spent some time talking about Growth Mindset and what it means to try something new, make mistakes and grow neurons.  We have also started a new part of class every day called Number Talks.  We spend some time working on Mental Math and looking at different strategies for solving a problem - concentrating on "thinking about our thinking" or meta-cognition.  The picture to the left is one of the dot talks we looked at.  How can you find how many dots there are without counting each one?  A number of different strategies are listed.

I am looking forward to seeing everyone at Open House on Wednesday, 9/14 from 5-6:30.  If for whatever reason you cannot make it, please feel free to contact me with questions or comments.

This week we really begin our 8th grade math curriculum using a new program named Pearson Realize Envisions.  We will start the year looking at Real Numbers.