Friday, August 19, 2011

Today's class began with this opener (pdf). Remember, it's a great strategy to occasionally review the openers on this blog if there was something you weren't quite sure about.

Then I returned your Math Skills Assessment and we talked about the importance and the process of reassessments. Remember that you have five school days from the date of assessment to reassess if you didn't score at least a 4.5 (and preferably a 5!) in any one of the four areas. We also talked about filling out your Skills List Student Checklist throughout the semester.

We learned about ratios and proportions, and investigated how we could solve a proportion for an unknown value (lesson, pdf). (Also a great idea to review the lessons.)

We previewed the Solving Proportions and Percents video that you're going to watch for homework this weekend and talked about the different pieces in it, how you should use it, and what you need to write down in your notebook. There are three main parts to the video: an examples and explanation part, a Guided Practice part, and a Self-Check part.

Examples and Explanation: Just what it sounds like. I explain how to do the problems and work through some examples. You don't need to write anything down (unless you want to), just watch, listen and learn. Pause the video and replay parts if you need to.

Guided Practice: I give you a problem, then ask you a series of questions with about 5 second pauses between questions for you to think about it and answer it for yourself. If you need to, pause the video to give yourself more time. Again, you don't have to write anything down here (although you can and it's often a good idea to).

Self-Check: I give you a problem, ask you to pause the video, write the problem down in your notebook and solve it, then play the video again to check your work. You may need to pause the video again to view the solution if you need more time. These problems you definitely need to write down in your notebook - I'll be checking to make sure on Monday.

Remember, you can always replay any part of the video you need to go back over something.

The homework for this weekend is:

1. Watch the Solving Proportions and Percents Video. Remember that it's probably best to view it full screen, and that if you're viewing it from school you'll need to use the link as you won't be able to see the embed below due to the filter.
   
   
   
2. If you need to reassess over any of the areas on the Math Skills Assessment, study and then make an appointment to reassess.
   
   
3. If you haven't had a chance to or had difficulty making a comment on Tuesday's post, please do that (using your Google Apps account).
   
   
4. Practice logging into the Moodle. Your login is your google apps login (the entire login, including the @lpsk12.org part), and the password is your google apps password. You'll need to use the Moodle next week (and probably in science as well), so please make sure you can do this or let me know so that I can help you.