We have been working through a challenging, yet fun chapter involving geometry. The students now know how to find volume and area and we will begain surface area this week. I'm thankful for resources like Khan Academy online and our own textbook's website, which provide additional examples and tutorials when the students are at home, away from a teacher. I will continue to have Math Help on Wednesdays so stop on by!
Mid-January Update - 1/18/13
The 7th graders have been learning all about percents and writing equations to solve percents. It is a joy to work with these students and see them develop their critical thinking skills. Now that they know how to set up percent equations and solve porportions, I enjoy helping them as they apply real-life situations like simple interest and percent of change. We just took the test that qualifies them for Math Olympics. I hope to see a few representatives going for U.C. Academy out of this class!
I continue to offer math help on Wednesdays from 3-3:30 so please encourage students to come in and get some one-on-one time!
End of October Update - 10/29/12:
We are in Chapter 3 now and the students are continuing to build on their previous math skills. Each lesson includes some review but always adds an additional concept or level of skill that they haven’t seen before so they are consistently challenged. Today we introduced Pythagorean theorem and talked about various real-world scenarios where that math theorem plays a role. As we build the building blocks to understand algebra, I am excited to see them develop systems for solving equations and methods that always work. They are practicing the concept of inverse operations on a regular basis and I want to see this become second nature to them as they solve algebra problems.
October Update:
We started out the year with review and practiced the
classroom routines of daily homework grading, completing corrections on time,
and taking good notes. For the most part we are not using calculators and the
students have already adapted well to this policy. They are getting extra
practice on important fundamental skills such as long division and
multiplication. My hope is that they understand the “why” behind their
calculations to a greater extent because of this. The students have just
completed Chapter 1 and are progressing quite well in Chapter 2. We are working
with rational numbers, integers, and algebraic expressions. As a class we are
continually working on problem solving strategies as most students find word
problems especially challenging. We have begun to use Edmodo for class
interaction, collaboration, and extra homework help. I’m posting relevant
videos from khan academy and students have found them helpful.
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