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.