Today we spent the class clarifying the mistakes that Ben made on Friday with his "mock" test. I gave him a test that I assumed he was prepared for but unfortunately he got all of the horizontal transformations swapped with the vertical transformations. So today we did an exercise on the board where Ben had to describe, up, down, left, right, stretch, shrink, or reflect. I did a few examples and then he did the rest. Next I gave him another mock exam. He did well on it this time. Tomorrow he will take a real test.
With rubber stamps, Richard practiced his spelling words and words with ce, ci, ge, gi. We played Bingo with CVCe words. Richard read books with words he can read.
Carson finished his MAP Testing within the first 10 minutes of class. We moved into the concept of rotations. We discussed how to rotate a figure in the coordinate plane 90 degrees counter-clockwise. We learned that the orientation is the only thing to change. The lengths and angle measures stay the same. For 90 degree rotations, we notice the x and y values swap and the y's become the opposite of what they were. This topic can be challenging for students, but Carson did an excellent job with it.
Today we continued to review problems from the Chapter 4 -Generate Equivalent Expressions. We began by working on factoring. We worked with the expression 63y-42. Aiden was initially stuck on finding the GCF, but he had the great idea of writing out all of the factors of 63 and 42. By doing so, he noticed 21 was the largest factor they had in common. He factored to get 21(3y-2). I told Aiden that I didn't see the 21 as the GCF at first. My brain saw a "7" first. So I showed Aiden what would happen if that's what he saw first. We would get 7(9y-6). Then that should prompt us to see that 9 and 6 still have common factors, so the 7 that we factored out was actually NOT the Greatest common factor, it was a factor, just not the greatest. We practiced another problem that we could run into a similar situation with. 81x-54. Aiden saw that they both had 9 in commmon. He factored to get 9(9x-6). Then he saw that the 9 and 6 inside the parenthesis still had a common factor of 3. We discussed how to properly take out the 3. I showed Aiden that 9(9x-6)=9(3(3x-2)). Then by commutative property we could combine the 9 and 3 to get 27(3x-2). Next we reviewed what happens when the leading coefficient is negative. We considered the problem -12y-16. Aiden's initial factoring was 4(-3y-4). I explained to him how that is correct, I would never mark it wrong, but I will comment each time that it would be ideal to take out a negative leading coefficient. This is just a good habit to get into now, as when we see more advanced factoring types having the negative factored out will be easier to work with. This problem type led us to discuss the WHYS behind the rules of positives/negatives in multiplication/division. I am going to look up a good way to explain this to him for tomorrow.
It's been a while since Matthew and I had class, so we took today's class to review. We reviewed topics: solving literal equations and solving absolute value equations. Matthew was rusty at first, but with a few examples/reminders he quickly recalled how to approach the problems. We are going to review quadratics tomorrow and take a test on Wednesday.
Today Andrew worked on his MAP testing for Geometry. He completed the test with 10 minutes left to spare. He asked if he could go to the art room to finish his painting. I agreed.
Today Joshua and I worked on graphing logarithms. We first reviewed his homework, which he had difficulty on. So we decided to use today’s class to practice further. We started with the exponential function as the parent function. We swapped the x and y values, then applied the transformations in the proper order. I did an example on the white board first, then I had Josh try a problem. We reviewed Domain, Range, asymptotes and end behavior.
Ben had a Test today on absolute value functions. I asked him if he wanted to review first. He shrugged his shoulders and said let’s get it over with.. Ben worked through the problems. I asked him to”explain in words” the transformations. He asked me what I meant by that and I said “up 3, down 2, reflect over the y/axis, shrink by a 1/2, etc”. On his test he wrote D4 and L1. I told him I understood what he meant but another teacher or professor might require proper description. .I will grade the test and we will review it Monday.
Aiden had an excellent class today. Aiden wanted to go back to look at the Table of Contents to see what we've learned so far, what he still has questions on, and what we have left to cover. He wrote down the questions that he had from MAP Testing. Most of his questions were Geometry and Statistics related, which are both the last chapters we will cover this year. He wanted to review the definitions of integers and rational numbers, so we did a mini review of examples and non-examples. Then we pulled a few problems from each section for review. Aiden took the lead and worked through the problems on his own. I only interjected when he felt unsure. He did a great job. We got through 4.1-4.4 today. Monday we will review 4.5 and then take a quiz on Tuesday.
