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!
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
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!)
And as always: read, read, read
Have a good one!
-Mr. Potter