Weekly Class Summary: Sept. 30-Oct. 4

SOLs Covered:  SOL 8.1 Order of Operations
Math Dictionary Sections:  7 Order of Operations
Upcoming Assessments:  PEMDAS, Substitution, & Verbal Expressions Quiz (Fri. 10/11)

This week students wrapped up their tests from last week as needed, taking one last chance to check over their work.  Aside from a few students who hadn't finished Monday for different reasons, most students got their graded tests back on Tuesday, for which they can still complete an Error Analysis as stated in a post earlier this week.  Please encourage students to take advantage of this opportunity!


We then moved onto reviewing the order of operations (a.k.a. PEMDAS), which has been covered in their previous years of math.  After the basic review, we started looking at some of the twists that come into play in 7th grade, such as grouping symbols other than plain old parentheses (other brackets, absolute value bars, radicals, fraction bar, and group symbols within grouping symbols) and the integration of integers into the problems.  We worked quite a few problems together in class, which was aided by our new tech acquisition of two ActivSlates!  The kids seem to really enjoy using the ActivSlates as I've seen students who normally shy away from volunteering step up to give it a shot.  They also enjoyed the little bit of practice I let them have by signing their names to graffiti the board.

PEMDAS Blaster Lite & PEMDAS Blaster from MangaHigh

As part of our practice for we also played a round of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" along with both the lite and regular versions of MangaHigh's PEMDAS Blaster.  While we played a few others as well, the kids seemed to really love these two in particular.  They've even been begging the rest of the week to play PEMDAS Blaster.  We haven't had time to play again in class, but since MangaHigh is one of the sites for which I've given students accounts, they can definitely play (and practice their math!) at home on their own.  I've been really proud and happy to see how many students have been playing on their own this week!

We'll continue our work with the order of operations as it applies to algebraic substitution next week along with reviewing (and looking at new twists for) verbal expressions.  A combined quiz on all of these topics is scheduled for next Friday.