Weekly Class Summary: Feb. 20-24

SOLs Covered: 6.1 & 7.4 Ratios, Rates, & Proportions

Math Dictionary Sections: (23) Ratios, Rates, & Proportions

Upcoming Assessments: Ratios/Rates/Proportions Quiz (Mon. 2/27); WWU Quiz 9 (Fri. 3/2)

I have been feeling a little under the weather this week, so this post will unfortunately be a little shorter than usual.  I do have to thank most of my students for being so wonderfully understanding and for trying to be on their best behavior.

After returning from a lovely three-day weekend, students needing to complete the last spiral review quiz did so while the rest of the students reviewed last week's work with ratios, rates, and proportions and worked new examples for each.  We watched the relating BrainPOP cartoons, one of which (Proportions) can be viewed again outside of school for free.  A link can also be found on the BrainPOP Proportions page to a Proportions game from Lure of the Labyrinth, one of the math gaming sites that I have set up accounts for each student.

Employee Cafeteria from Lure of the Labyrinth via BrainPOP

Since so many of my students love to draw and have an interest in art, we also took time to discuss how ratios and proportions relate to it in the way paintings, cartoons, etc are often visually more appealing when their parts are in proportion to each other.  Deliberately taking things out of proportion (but still often upholding some kind of mathematical reasoning) can work for other types of art, like movie character and creature design (ex. disproportional fingers on an alien in E.T.^©) or movie FX (ex. making normal-sized people look like Hobbits™ in The Hobbit^© and Lord of the Rings™).

In an effort to motivate students to complete and turn in homework on time as well as rewarding those who have been diligently doing so all year, I am adding another Stingray Points reward opportunity this week that will continue through the rest of the school year.  Every student who turns in completed homework for the entire week will be entered into a random drawing using the Random Name/Word Picker on ClassTools.net:  30 points going to the first drawn, 20 to the second, and 10 to the third.  Congratulations to the first round of winners!

Due to a bit of time constraint on top of me not being at my best (and thus feeling I probably have not been able to give my students my all this week), the quiz for this unit will not take place until Monday after we have had a chance to go over the rest of the review sheet students completed on Friday.