Yes, it's the return to school today. On this full-distance Monday, the eighth graders begin the multiple choice portion of their Benchmarks. During today's department meeting, the Math 8 teacher leader suggested reviewing a Unit 1 topic with them -- exponents, since their laws are easy to forget. I spend about 10-15 minutes going over the laws -- only to have her tell me after school that power of a product and power of a quotient weren't covered in Math 8.
If I had been at this school from the start, I could have sung an exponent song in Unit 1 -- and then play that song again today as a quick reminder. Speaking of songs, there are a glut of songs I'd like to do this week based on their current assignments. (As usual, you'll find out tomorrow which songs I choose.)
I suspect that despite my going over exponents, most students fare poorly on the Benchmarks. The first question directs students to "select all that apply," which always seems to trip the students up -- and I think there's at least one more such question on the test. The extra time it takes me to remind the students of exponents is time taken away from finishing the test, and so a few students are unable to finish them.
Today is also November 30th -- the anniversary of the day I hit my eighth grade P.E. teacher and was suspended from school. I continue my tradition today of telling the story to any eighth graders I sub on the last day of November. (I've been doing this the last few years, but I'm surprised that I never mentioned this story on the blog until last week's Thanksgiving post.)
The seventh graders already took their multiple choice Benchmarks before Thanksgiving. And so today's lesson is all about preparing them for the upcoming Performance Task portion, which is about modeling a pattern with a linear expression. The department head has supplied me with a video to show them -- and this time, I don't just play the video the whole period. Instead, I show them a Google Slideshow and then ask a few questions near the end.
This works well in second period, but in third period I had the misfortune of randomly choosing a boy who steps away to the bathroom (at home, since today is online). This slows me down near the end -- I rush through the end of the problem myself, and then I forget to remind the students to go to fifth period for tutorial. Three girls who are in both my 3rd/5th periods neglect to stay for tutorial.
And fifth period itself doesn't go smoothly either. Normally the students log in to Clever and then log in to ST Math or Dreambox to start their weekly 60 minutes, but for some reason, the ST Math and Dreambox icons don't appear on Clever. I inform the district math tech person to investigate the matter.
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