Grade Change Form

Confession:  I make up my own forms for me to use.  I know it's crazy, but whatever.  I'm owning up to it.

Our school uses SchoolTool to manage attendance, discipline, and grades.  It allows parents and students to view grades that are entered into the online grade book.  It has been very helpful in keeping students motivated and keeping parents in the loop about what's going on in school with their child.

I update grades every Friday.  After I update the grades there are often students that complete missing homework.  I give half credit for this, and then of course have to go back into SchoolTool to change the grade.  I also change test grades after retests, and once quarterly, I give students a make-up quiz to replace their lowest quiz grade.  Keeping track of all these changes is not easy, and therefore has necessitated a form.

My form is simple.  I will write down the student's name, the assignment, the new grade, and I've left a column to check off as I complete the change.  I hope this will keep me on track.  I will use it for the first time tomorrow.  Check back in a few weeks for a reflection.

My new form is available to purchase in TPT.

Individual White Board Update

So my bags of white boards under each student desk only lasted through half of the school year.  Many white boards went missing.  Many markers went missing.  The erasers usually lasted, unless the entire bag went missing.  Then one day when I was leaving school, the custodian came in and as she swept my classroom, I noticed that she was sweeping up my marker board bags and throwing them away!  I was furious.

At this point, I already knew that I could not simply ask my students to make sure they put the bag under the desks before they left.  I'd been asking them to do that all year, and it never really sunk in.  I told my classes about this one morning as I reminded them to deposit their bags under their seats, and a student asked why I didn't just leave the marker boards at the back of the room and have them pick up the items when they came to class.  Originally I was worried that this would be too much of a hassle.  Having a student suggest the idea made me think that it must not be a hassle after all.

It was settled, I trashed the bags, bought new markers, made new white boards, and purchased a photo box.  Here is my new organization system for marker boards:

And so far it's been working great.  It's not too much of a hassle for students to pick up a calculator, handouts, and marker board supplies as I'd originally thought.  They have even been pretty good about putting the marker board supplies back.  The classroom also looks much neater without the marker board bags hanging out from under the desks or on the floor under the desks.  Problem solved!

Geometry Interactive Notebook - The Ninth Unit

Our ninth unit was on Measurement.  Measurement mostly applies to three-dimensional shapes, but it is necessary to also discuss two-dimensional shapes.  Since this unit requires students to visualize three-dimensional shapes, I think I might move coverage of points, lines, and planes to this unit.  Trying to cover it in the beginning of the year is just tedious when students are not yet in the geometrical frame of mind.  On the other hand, I've been considering moving this whole unit to the beginning of the year because it so dependent upon basic Algebra skills.  I think it would be a good way to ease students into Geometry.  Although it is nice to have this unit toward the middle of the year (beginning of the end really) because it gives students a break from all of the difficult topics we've covered.

This unit requires practice, so most of my focus was on practice worksheets.  The notes for this unit are very basic.

 I forget where I got the area and perimeter handout originally, but I re-formatted the handout so it could be included as a notebook page.

 Then we took notes on lateral areas, volume, and surface area and volume of spheres.

 

 The most interesting thing we did for this unit was a reference sheet foldable.  The reference sheet our state uses requires editing.  I emphasize that students need to know three changes to make to the reference sheet.  #1:  The volume formula for prisms is not included, I remind them to write it down.  #2:  The volume of a cylinder formula is given as V=Bh, but the base area of a cylinder is always pi times radius squared.  #3:  The volume of a cone formula has the same problem.  They give V=1/3Bh, but the base area needs to be changed to pi times radius squared.  I had students cut the cylinder and cone formulas into flaps so they could write the correct formula underneath.

 

Overall this unit went well.  The only thing that I would change would be to allow more time for independent practice.  

Geometry Interactive Notebook - The Eighth Unit

Our next unit was on Similarity.  My original plan for the curriculum is to have a unit on similarity and then a unit on right triangles.  Since I am not teaching Common Core Geometry this year, I combined the two units into one and only taught the aspects of right triangles that need to be covered (ie:  no Trigonometry).    That is pretty much how I taught it last year anyway.  This year I taught things in a different order, but as I was teaching it, I was unhappy with the order I came up with.  It was too late to fix it though and so we plugged on.

I started with the Pythagorean Theorem.  This felt a little funny because we have been using the Pythagorean Theorem all year.  What was new for the students was Pythagorean Triples (which students are just now finally starting to remember) and the Converse of the Pythagorean Theorem.

Next we did the Triangle Proportionality Theorem.  Last year I taught two other proportionality theorems along with this one.  I'm wondering if I'll have to add them back in for next year.  Anyway, I took them out so my students could focus on the main theorem.  I introduced them to the other two theorems later during a practice activity.

Then we did the Mean Proportional.  I really struggled to teach this last year.  It was the first time I'd ever seen this, and I understood it, but I could not for the life of me explain it well enough to my students.  This year I jumped right into a formula for calculating the Mean Proportional.  My students were much better able to answer questions about the Mean Proportional this year.  After teaching the formula method, I intended to go back and reteach it explaining the three similar triangles.  (Note:  we did not even cover similarity yet in this unit; I wanted to get all of the right triangle topics covered first.)  I never was able to go back to this topic, but we do have a ton of review coming up.

I began the true similarity portion of this unit with Dilations as Common Core suggests.  Students loved these, but some mistakenly added the scale factor instead of multiplying it.  The next day we studied Dilations with Compositions.  I liked having this separate from the congruence transformations because allowed for review.

Next we covered Similar Polygons and verifying that polygons are similar.

Then we used similar polygons to solve for missing lengths. 

Following that, we went over Similarity Proof.  On the first day, I introduced them to the three Postulates/Theorems that prove figures are similar.  For this lesson, there were so many diagrams and so much writing that I made two sheets of handouts and fill in the blank notes for students to glue into their notebooks.

The next day we did formal two-column proofs using the Angle Angle Similarity Postulate.  For this we did a worksheet and stapled it into our notebooks.

After more practice, we concluded our similarity unit.  Sadly I did not come up with any interesting or "fun" ideas to use in our notebooks.  I'm starting to brainstorm what I can do differently for next year already.