Monday, September 29, 2014

9/29/2014 Summary/Refelction

Today in 8th grade we introduced two new concepts: The Converse of the Pythagorean Theorem and Using the Pythagorean Theorem to find the distance between two points on a coordinate plane. The classes seemed to do very well with both concepts. I will need to use the assignment in a couple of days to see how well they actually did understand both concepts.

In addition, we reviewed Using Pythagorean Theorem. The Formative Assessment I used showed that the classes are solid (95% get it when asked to find c), but only 70% get it when they have to find one of the legs. Therefore, we will need to do a few more example problems tomorrow before our end of chapter test Friday. Lastly, I handed back their quizzes from Friday on Estimating Irrational Square Roots and Classifying Rational/Irrational Numbers. Students can retake either part of that quiz once they meet with me to go over their corrections.

The 6th graders are finishing up their chapter on Decimal Operations by working on Order of Operations. We have been working on this the past couple of school days. Our pre-test data showed an average of a 35%. After giving the students a formative assessment this morning, that average jumped to a 75%. We are still going to have to work on consistently doing our parentheses work before multiplying or dividing, but we are getting there.

The 7th grade is finishing up their unit on Number Sense by remembering how to Add and Subtract fractions and decimals. I handed back their quizzed from Friday on Integers. The students can retake any part of that quiz for a higher grade once they meet with me to go over their errors. Both classes showed a lower average (65%) on subtracting integers than adding and multiplying/dividing (85% and 95% respectively).



2 comments:

Dave Mulder said...

I love the idea of daily reflections, my friend! I should do this too. How about for the month of October--every day we teach, we reflect on what we taught, how it went, great learning that happened (both for students AND for us), and things we could do differently next time around?

Maybe we'll start a movement?

Thanks for sharing your day. #GreatTeachers

jcordery said...

Thanks for taking the time to read this, Dave. I am going to push myself to do this daily. Even if it is just a few sentences on what I thought did or did not work. I was going to go old school and use a notebook, but I thought the blog would make more sense.