Tuesday and Wednesday

For some students, they admit defeat even before they begin a task.  They may not even be aware of how easy something might be because they are afraid or have doubts about their abilities.  In Room 52, I like to see possibilities and that requires a sense of hope and optimism.

Sure, we all fail or have difficulties with certain things, but that should not define who we are.  Accept defeat, from time to time, figure out where you went wrong, ask for some help, and move forward.

image taken from http://realbalancewellness.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/the-optimistic-advantage-in-being-well/

As we prepare to hand in the short, narrative paragraphs, I was reviewing, with a students, the 3 types of sentences I am expecting in the paragraph:

Simple, Compound, Complex

Another important point for this paragraph exercise, is the use of transition words.  The students received a handout from Writers Express which looked like this:

We spent some more time -- the Grade 7s did -- taking up the old Algebra test in preparation for another one tomorrow:

In addition to looking at these questions, we will look at some word problem questions.  Here is a question that Tamar solved:

The questions are nothing different from the adding and subtracting the students are already doing.  I would like to push them a bit by introducing Multiplying and Division to the equations, but I will be mindful of not overwhelming the students.

For this question, I drew a couple of rough pictures to break down the question.  For some of the class, they learn best with images and pictures.  Once the question is laid out, using the knowledge of "balancing" the equation is very straightforward.  Here is a screenshot of the completed question from the preceding video.

Here is the other problem solving question  that a number of students got involved in answering.  Again, I used a visual to demonstrate how to extract the information from the question.  It makes it a little easier:

As the Grade 7s embark on their journey into Geometry, here is another useful link from math.com that will introduce some concepts:  http://www.math.com/school/subject2/lessons/S2U4L1GL.html

Here is an image of what will be looking at over the next little while:

image taken from http://www.teacherschoice.com.au/maths_library/coordinates/plotting_ordered_pairs.htm

If we have time, we may explore the full grid, which looks something like this and also contains negative numbers.  If we don't get to this now, we will in Grade 8.

image taken from http://www.teacherschoice.com.au/maths_library/coordinates/plotting_ordered_pairs.htm

PROGRESS REPORTS WERE SENT HOME YESTERDAY AND NEED TO BE RETURNED BY MONDAY, JUNE 9, 2014

 The Reader's Theatre project is the second last major presentation for the year.  I have provided the students with the final details of the assignment and created two rough drafts and shared the first one with them.  Here is the second one: