6th & 8th Grade Math
with Ms. Watkins
September 26, 2014 Volume 4
Office Hours
Every Tuesday from 3:15-4:00 I have what I refer to as office hours. This is a time when students may come in and begin their homework, work on the script or a reassessment video, or just receive additional help. This week we had several students in for the office hours and many finished all their math homework during that time. If your child wants to attend it is open for all. Below are some expectations for all who come. The purpose of sharing these are to make it clear that this time is for understanding math.
Expectations:
- Work on math material first.
- Keep voices down so that everyone can focus on their own material.
- If a student wants or needs a snack please make sure it is nut free.
Reassessment
If students want to be reassessed on any standard they can make an educreations video. It is due two weeks from when the assessment was sent home.
6th Grade
The week we've spent all of our time on integers (positive and negative whole numbers). On Monday while I was out students practiced adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing integers. If they finished that worksheet they were given one about banking and writing checks. On Tuesday we had a game day. Students were able to play two of the following games: integer subtraction war, Zip Zero Zilch, and online games. If you want to play any of these games with your children, I'll have the directions for each on the "handouts" section of my website (mswatkinsmath.weebly.com) and I'll post the links to the online games they were allowed to play. Wednesday after listening to all the high school presentations we went to the computer lab to sign into edmodo and educreations. There are still some kinks to work out, but many were able to sign in and use the sites. I encourage students to write their usernames and passwords down in their planners (in a place that won't be easily visible to their friends), so that if they forget they can reference it This also makes it easy for them to share that information with you. The rest of the week was spent working on their integer projects. Every student met with me on Thursday to let me know what they were planning on doing. Friday we spent a little time reviewing the chapter 1 test and discussing what needs to be done to be reassessed on any of the material. The remainder of the class was devoted to the project.
The project due date is at the end of class on Monday
8th Grade
On Monday, while I was out, students were given a short packet on banking and checking. Once they completed it, they were given additional problems on simplifying exponents. On Tuesday we discussed how to simplify expressions with division. Wednesday we continued our work on exponents with examples of how to simplify expressions written in scientific notation with division. The remainder of the class was devoted to reviewing exponents and working on the study guide. This year I want to give students more time to study and review for quizzes, but I don't want to delay instruction. To facilitate this I will have the following sequence for quizzes: in class review for 1 day, new topic (not on quiz) for 1 day, and then the quiz. I am doing this so that after the review and working on the study guide students have time to think about and ask questions. The new topic introduced in the day between will only be part of that section, because I plan for 5-10 minutes of questions about material on the quiz at the start of that class. The rest will be discussed after the quiz. This means that students only assigned homework for the night before a quiz is to study for the quiz. On Thursday we calculated the square root of perfect squares and we used estimation to approximate the square root of a number that is not a perfect square. Our week ended with a quiz on simplifying expressions with exponents. After the quiz as a class we played square root bingo.
The next scheduled assessment is a quiz 3.8 & 11.1-11.3 on Tuesday, October 7th