A high of 70?  Seriously?  North Carolina is ridiculous.

 

Order of operations is going just swimmingly.  For the most part the students have internalized the idea that we do the most powerful operations first, unless we are told implicitly otherwise.  Today we did a lot of work with parenthesis, which can trip even the best of us up and become confusing when they are nested within each other.

A thing that I used to do when I was young was connect the open and close parenthesis like they were bubbles.  This way I could see where they started and stopped, and I could focus in on the inner-most ‘bubble’ and start there.  If this helps your student, by all means encourage them to do this until they get the hang of it.

an example: bubble parenthesis

 

Tonight they have a new page of equations to evaluate, as well as a little puzzle at the bottom.  At the bottom they are given 4 numbers, and they must put those numbers (all used once and only once!) into an equation so that the answer will be 24.  There is an example in case they have forgotten.  There are also rewards depending upon how many equations they can come up with!

OOPs homework 2

 

In language arts we had to have a talk about the paragraph that was homework last night.  Many students simply wrote a paragraph comparing the CONTENT of the two passages, instead of comparing and contrasting the TEXT STRUCTURES used by the authors.  We took a look at what this kind of comparing and contrasting might look like, and came up with this basic framework:

In the Helen Keller passage the author used the ….. text structure. In the Alexander Graham Bell passage the author used the ….. text structure.  I believe the author used ….. in the HK passage because….I believe the author used …… in the AGB passage because….

Tonight students should take this framework, and fill it in.  This will replace their work from yesterday.

Students should also complete a worksheet on text structures and graphic organizers, just as we have been doing in the past.  please DO NOT ASSIST YOUR STUDENT WITH THIS WORKSHEET.  I am trying to get a good idea of where students are at with these understandings, and I’m using this worksheet to assess this.  Please allow them to work completely independently on this, regardless of how much it may drive you insane as you see them make a silly mistake (Welcome to the story of my life).

 

In Science we started talking about heredity and genetics.  This is always a really interesting topic where we learn all about what makes us what we are and what we look like.  Tonight ask your student why they weren’t born with 4 heads and 9 noses, and see what they say!

 

so, tl;dr

one math worksheet on order of operations, with a puzzle

OOPs homework 2

Re-do paragraph comparing text structures of Helen Keller and Alexander Graham Bell selections

One text structure review sheet (to be done individually, no matter how it may vex you!)

TextStructuresDec3

And as always:  read, read, read

 

Have a good one!

 

-Mr. Potter

Today we finally said goodbye to our plants.  We took our planters out to the woods and emptied the soil so that it could be used by other plants.  We also got to pull out the plants and look at their root systems, which was very interesting.  Many of the students were surprised by how long the roots had gotten, and how well anchored they were.  It was difficult pulling out many of the corn stalks.

 

In Math we continue to work on order of operations.  Just remember, we do the most powerful operations first (working left to right) unless we are told otherwise!

In case you need them, here are yesterday’s notes: OOPNotes

We did many problems together today as a class, and here are some examples in case you need them as well: OOPSExamples

Tonight the students have a simple page of expressions to evaluate using order of operations.  Included on this sheet are two problems that have answers, and the students must decide where to put parenthesis in the problems in order for them to evaluate to the given answer.

OOPs homework

 

In Language Arts we got to have many individual conferences about the students’ Goldilocks stories.  We went over their own personal rubric, and why they gave themselves the grading that they did.  It can be very difficult to objectively grade yourself, or look at yourself with a critical eye in general.  If we can get this down,  I believe it will make us into better writers.  If we can get the whole looking at yourself in general with a critical eye thing down, it might even make us into better human beings.  (maybe!)

We got through about half of the students today, and we’ll get through the next half tomorrow I hope.

 

Tonight in language arts, students should first write a short paragraph comparing and contrasting the two passages they read yesterday (page 19-22 in motivation reading).  I want this to be a compare and contrast of the TEXT STRUCTURES used, and NOT the content of the stories.  This means I DON’T want to see something like “One was about Helen Keller, and the other was about Alexander Graham Bell”.  What I want to see is something along the lines of “In the first passage the author used problem and solution to describe such and such, and in the second passage the author also used problem and solution to describe so and so….”

Students should also Answer the questions about the two passages on pages 23-26 in their motivation reading books.  As always, I expect reasoning!

 

tl;dr:

one simple sheet of expressions

OOPs homework

Pages 23-26 in motivation reading WITH REASONING and then a paragraph comparing the text structures of the txt structures of the two passages (NOT THE CONTENT!)

 

as always, read for 35 minutes

 

Have  a good one!

 

-Mr. Potter

I hope everyone had a great thanksgiving break!  Mine was full of food and naps.  It was wonderful.

 

Today we started talking about the order of operations.  I was pleasantly surprised that no students had weird ideas about PEMDAS or Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally.  Basically please don’t tell your students these things, as they oftentimes give students mistaken ideas like they should do multiplication before division, or addition before subtraction.  Instead, we took a good amount of notes on the ‘big idea’ behind order of operations, which is that we do the more powerful operations first, unless we’re told implicitly otherwise.

Together we came up with the basic rankings of operations as follows:

multiplication and division are most powerful

addition and subtraction are less powerful

 

This is because multiplication and division are the inverse of each other, so they’re equally powerful.

Same with addition and subtraction.

So what about that ‘implicitly told otherwise’ thing?  That means before we do those, we should do anything in parenthesis, starting at the innermost, and working our way out.

 

Finally, there are two things we haven’t learned much about, but are worth mentioning: exponents and radicals.  These are both more powerful than basic multiplication or division, so these go before those operations.

Which means our final Order of Operations goes:

1. parenthesis
2. exponents and radicals
3. multiplication and division
4. addition and subtraction

The notes we took: OOPNotes

We talked about doing problems one step at a time, and looking at each step and determining what is the most powerful operation, moving from left to right.

 

Tonight students have a very simple page of exponents to do, along with two expressions to solve, using order of operations.

ExponentsDec1

In Language Arts, we talked at GREAT length about what Mr. Potter is looking for in our stories.  The students got a copy of my grading rubric for their Goldilocks stories, and they themselves graded their own paper, and a peer’s paper.  For many students, it looks like it finally got them to look at their own papers with a critical eye.  We will continue exercises that will get the students to critically examine their own work in the future.  I’d like for this to become a habit, and not something that we have to ask them explicitly to do.

Here is the rubric we used: Goldilocks Rubric

 

Tonight students have some text structure review.  They should read the two passages on pages 19-22 in their motivation reading book.  After each passage, they should draw a graphic organizer that corresponds to the text structure used for that story.

In Science, we took all of our plant data, and put it into excel.  The students then got to play around a good bit with creating graphs in excel.  We had a lot of fun messing around with the different settings, and thinking about what kind of graphs and what settings would represent our data the best.

Later we will add in temperature data and talk about comparing graphs, or maybe even plotting multiple data points on one graph!  It should be fun.

 

ok, so tl;dr

one page of exponents, and two problems to answer using order of operations

ExponentsDec1

Read pages 19-22 in motivation reading, and after each passage draw a graphic organizer that corresponds to the text structure used in each story.

As always, read and get your reading log signed!

 

Have a good one,

 

-Mr. Potter