03 May 2016
Week 32 – Actually Getting To Geometry This Year

Week 32 – Actually Getting To Geometry This Year

Man, this is the latest I've done a weekly blog reflection.  It's Tuesday of the following week.  I remember about mid-week last week I thought 'I should really include this in my blog' but I forgot what I was referring to.  Dang it. This year I'm actually getting to my geometry units in both my 6th grade and 7th grade math classes.  I didn't get to them last year due to being in a new school, wasting a lot time with the inefficient way I did classroom economy, and still learning the art of a discussion-based classroom.  Needless to say,…
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03 Apr 2016
Week 28 – Let’s Talk About (Proportional) Relationships

Week 28 – Let’s Talk About (Proportional) Relationships

It seems it was all about proportions in both my 6th grade and 7th grade math classes this week.  I've written about this in the past but I find that these classes tend to have a bit of overlap.  Partly because I have some 6th graders that are placed in 7th grade math so while they have a pretty solid foundation, I don't think it would be wise to just assume they know everything that I teach in 6th grade math.  Let's see how things differed this week. PRE-ALGEBRA This has been one of our quickest units yet.  These are the three…
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30 Jan 2016
Week 21 – Teaching Distributive Property & Simplifying Expressions

Week 21 – Teaching Distributive Property & Simplifying Expressions

This week, I used a couple of National Council of Teachers of Mathematics resources for my Pre-Algebra classes.  Additionally, in 6th grade math, I found a wider divide between kids who totally get what we're doing and kids who are fairly lost.  We're also ramping into building actual robots in robotics! PRE-ALGEBRA DISTRIBUTIVE PROPERTY My goal this week was to teach the distributive property and simplifying expressions in Pre-Algebra.  Last year, my 'lesson' on the distributive property was 1 slide in a presentation about simplifying expressions.  Needless to say, they never had a really deep understanding of it.  This year,…
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