What's Going On? January 2nd and January 3rd

Welcome Back!

I hope everyone had a relaxing break and had some time to relax and rejuvenate as we prepare to finish our first semester.


1st Semester Project


For the two days we will see each other this week, students will be working together on their first semester projects.  Prior to the break, students had the opportunity to choose their preferred topics.  I took into account student preferences and assigned groups based on the feedback.  Students will be working in their assigned groups on their assigned topic to help the rest of the class get ready for the final exam.  For the project, students will prepare a "one-stop shopping document" that includes all of the definitions, formulas, and concisely summarizes the topic.  Students will prepare a short 10-15 minute review game to help us to practice the concept.  In the past, students have created a "Castle Attack" game, Kahoot, a board game, and other activities to make our review time engaging.  Finally, students will also write 8 practice problems and provide an answer key for the review questions.  These practice problems will serve as homework for the rest of the class.



Planning Ahead

Our final exam will be held on Wednesday, January 22nd from 9:30-11:00am.  Details about the exam will be discussed as we get closer to the exam date.

What's Going On? December 16th through December 20th

Winter Spirit Week!

This week, we will have a spirit week with different themed dress-up days.  On Friday, we will run a modified schedule and there will be an assembly with a student-staff volleyball game at the end of the day.  Please note: Tuesday is also club picture day.  Students should listen to the announcements and report to the auditorium when their group is called.

Finishing Up Unit 6: Polygons and Quadrilaterals

During class on Monday, students will have the class period to work on our summative review in preparation for Tuesday's summative.  On Tuesday, students will complete the unit 6 summative during class.  Please note: I will not be in class on this day as I will be running yearbook club picture day.  Students who have last-minute questions can see me before the start of the school day.  The test will take place in our flexible learning space in the 200 hallway.  Students will be permitted to use a calculator (not on the iPad) and will need to turn in their phones or leave them in their lockers during the summative.  Students who will need to leave class during the summative due to a yearbook picture should talk with me about starting the assessment early so that it can be finished by the end of class.  You can check out the club picture day schedule here:

 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rvoeO2gsXjPB28233OnfYj2bemVe0omvNFsnEPvbXDs/edit

In class during Wednesday and Thursday, students will participate in some ACT-style review questions as well as work on some concepts related to probability.




Planning Ahead

For those of you who like to plan ahead, here is the semester exam schedule for January:

What's Going On? December 9th through December 13th

Quadrilaterals on the Coordinate Plane

This week we will work on applying our knowledge of quadrilaterals to the coordinate plane.  That means, we will examine the coordinates of a quadrilateral and use various algebra formulas to classify the shape.  Students will use our previously applied slope, midpoint, and distance formulas to determine the measures of angles and side lengths for our figure.  Then, based on the characteristics we have learned about for the different types of quadrilaterals, students will be able to classify the shape.  We will end the week with a "Quadrilaterals Detectives in Training" formative assessment where students will work in groups to graph
different shapes based on the characteristics.  Then the groups will swap projects and use their "detective skills" in order to determine the type of shape graphed.











January Exam Schedule

For those of you who like to plan ahead, check out our exam schedule for January:

What's Going On? December 2nd through December 6th

Unit 6: Polygons and Quadrilaterals

This week, we will continue our study of polygons and quadrilaterals.  We will spend Monday's class focused on proving parallelograms.  For the rest of the week, we will focus in on different types of quadrilaterals, including rhombuses, rectangles, squares, kites, and trapezoids.  We will spend our final day of the week on applying our proofs with the coordinate plane. 

What's Going On? November 25th and November 26th

Happy Thanksgiving!


Due to the Thanksgiving Holiday, we will have classes on Monday and Tuesday with a break
Wednessday through Friday.  Monday will be a "Monday-style" schedule with AE and Tuesday will be a "purple-style" schedule without AE.








Unit 6: Polygons and Quadrilaterals

This week, we will introduce our sixth unit of the year.  We will spend Monday's class learning about some general characteristics of polygons such as the sum of the interior and exterior angles.  We will spend Tuesday's class discussing the characteristics of parallelograms. 

What's Going On? November 18th through November 22nd

Unit 5: Triangle Relationships

This week, students will continue our study of "Points of Concurrency".  So far, we have taken a look at the incenter, where the three angle bisectors of a triangle meet, and circumcenter, where the three perpendicular bisectors of a triangle meet.

This week, we will focus on the centroid, where three medians meet, and the orthocenter, where three altitudes of a triangle meet.

We will then spend Wednesday's class reviewing and complete our unit 5 summative during class on Thursday.  Our test will be made of up three major components:

• Solving for missing measurements 
• Constructing points of concurrency
• Writing equations and determining the location of a point of concurrency.

What's Going On? November 11th through November 15th

Unit 4: Triangles

This week, we will wrap up our fourth unit on triangles.  Students will spend Monday's class getting last minute questions answered and participate in a review activity.  During class on Tuesday, students will complete their unit 4 summative.  All formative work for the unit must be turned in by the start of class on Tuesday in order to be eligible for a summative retake.  Students will have two major parts of the summative:

1. Working with measures in triangles, including isosceles triangles
2. Proving triangles congruent

During class on Wednesday, we begin our fifth unit where we will spend more time discovering relationships that exist within triangles.  Students will spend some time learning to construct angle bisectors and perpendicular bisectors within a triangle.  By doing this, students will "discover" points of concurrency.