Our plans for January 22-25 (our last weekly update!)

Dear parents,

This is our last weekly update. I’m going to drop this part of my teaching due to low readership in favor of less frequent posts/pages about curriculum or classroom highlights. I apologize for people who are enjoying the updates, but feel like it is the right plan to discontinue this. I’ve been writing weekly updates for a year and a half now! While I am sad to see them go, I know this will make room for more meaningful content for parents and students over time. 

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Our plans for January 14-18

The only way to learn Mathematics is to do Mathematics. -Paul Halmos

This week we started our winter iReady testing. We piloted using Chromebooks in our classroom instead of going to the computer lab. This generally went really well!! If your child has their own headphones, please encourage him to bring them on Monday for day #2 of testing. We have school headphones, but they aren’t as great as the ones the kids are used to using. Unfortunately, we had internet problems period 9 so the kids didn’t get to start. Instead we pivoted quickly and worked on what we plan on learning next Tuesday. Our classes will even up over the course of next week.

Our plans for January 7-11

In Math 7 this week we’ll be continuing to work through Module 3. This module is where we get to have some fun learning about like terms and working with them. You can support your child by accessing Google Classroom with them to check out the class notes. Their notes should be filled in through lesson 3 at this point. All notes (.pdf version) are posted in Google Classroom. Please look at the header for things and see which pages were that day. Each day the updated .pdf version is posted, so you will have to “flip” to the proper pages to check things out.

This is our plan for the week.

• Monday – Lesson 4 Factoring and Distributive Property (Home Practice)
• Tuesday – Lesson 5/Review (NO Home Practice)
• Wednesday – Review (Finish Review Sheet for HP if needed)
• Thursday – Quiz Lessons 1-5
• Friday – iReady testing

Our plans for December 17-21

It is almost impossible to imagine that the first 25 weeks of school has ended!! Wow. I just put in our home practice for the first 5 weeks and 66 of the 83 students that I have in grade 7 between the two classes (Math 7 and Pre-Algebra) completed all or missed only one home practice. That is 80% of the grade at almost 100% preparation. I was really so happy to see this data – sometimes when you are going over things in class it is easy to focus your head on the couple of kids who aren’t doing the work and get really sad about the people you aren’t reaching. The reality is that MOST of our 7th graders are doing their work! And our classes are really delightfully behaved. I’m proud of their efforts!! Thank YOU for all the support you are giving them at home. I know the Weekly Math Reviews are requiring some strong parent effort and I appreciate that effort.

Our plans for December 10-14

Math 7

We are nearing the end of Module 2, so we’ll be having a quiz late this week and looking at an end of Module test next week before our break.

We are currently working on operations with rational numbers, and will get into writing and solving our own equations by mid-week.

Our plans for December 3-5

“Set your goals ridiculously high. If it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.

-James Cameron

Wow another short week is coming up! Please try to log in with your child to Google Classroom at least once this week. You can get a good idea of what we have been doing in class this way.

Math 7 boys working on their Mind Map project the day before Thanksgiving.

In Math 7 we had a project spanning the holiday break. Thanks to Sarah Brainard for sharing this picture with me of project work the day before Thanksgiving. 

Our plans for November 26-30

I hope that everyone had a very relaxing Thanksgiving Break! For my family, it was the first time we’ve stayed in town for 3 years. We have watched World Cup ski racing in Killington Vermont for the past two years and decided this year we were going to stay home. It has been nice to just have a few days at home!!

This coming week is our first 5 day week in awhile, and it is punctuated with yet another 3 day week next week. We’ll be in school for the entire week this week and then only 3 days that first week in December. We’ll work hard to get back into flow this week.