WMS: Math/Halloween Update

Dear Families,

It's Wednesday and it's Halloween. For anyone celebrating the day, I wish you much fun and a safe evening!

Repaired my Email Archive!

• This year I tried switching over to a new service for providing you an archive of my emails; but it wasn't working reliably. Last night I switched back to my old blog service (blogger.com) and set it up to function as an email archive. Now whenever I send out updates about my classes, the email is also posted to a blog so that you have another spot to look for things that had been sent out in the past and find resources that I might have shared.
  
• To find this archive, go to http://www.mrmacnevin.com and select Mr. Mac's Blog on the left hand side.
  

News of Math Present

• I am assigning no homework tonight (Wednesday night) because we are inbetween topics and books right now and because I know people will be pretty busy tonight. But students are still expected to review or revise today's math review so that they can be prepared to show their stuff on Friday!
• For math reviews, I am now making them skill-specific. This week we are working on adding fractions and mixed numbers.
• Yesterday we took a unit test on fractions, decimals and percents. Students took longer to complete than I'd anticipated, so today we corrected the test. I hope to mark and return them by Friday so that students can reflect on it in class.

New of Math Future

• In math the next place we are headed is strengthening skills for adding and subtracting of fractions and mixed numbers; and starting to get into multiplication and division of fractions.
• Multiplying and dividing of fractions are interesting because they are so easy to do and the algorithm is so easy to learn, but understanding conceptually what is happening takes more doing. So when we get there we won't be jumping right into the algorithm, but will instead be going back to review arrays with the kids and using that model to build the steps to the algorithm. You can expect to hear a lot more about that over the next 2-3 weeks.
  

Have a great Wednesday evening,

Brian MacNevin

WMS: Math Update: Test tomorrow and Progress Reports Today

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Brian MacNevin <Brian.MacNevin@bellinghamschools.org>
Date: Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 4:28 PM
Subject: WMS: Math Update: Test tomorrow and Progress Reports Today
To:


Dear Families,

Math

Tomorrow we are going to take out unit test for Bits and Pieces 1. Today in class students began working on some practice problems to review and practice. I am sending you lines to the practice problems [link] and an answer key [link].

Progress Reports

We have been transitioning to our new online student information system and we're all learning about how to use this tool. When the system goes live for families (I believe next week), we hope that the online gradebook will be a convenient way for you to see how your child is doing with assessments. But I will be honest with you, we are still learning the ins and outs of the new system and I think that at first it will lead to more questions than answers. As you look things over, please know that the assessments (quizzes, tests, assessments) are what carry the most worth in the gradebook, but they aren't averaged or calculated. At the end of the semester, teachers try to find a score that follows the trend shown by the student's scores. So we are looking for ways to use this tool to give you a clearer idea of how your child is performing on assessments so there isn't as much "stuff" to wade through.

I have attempted to write up more detail about the progress report and have placed it [here]. Please read it um... patiently. I tried to explain more about the categories and the types of scores you are likely to see on the progress reports. Mrs. Sherwood has put together a very good overview of the difference between standards-based reporting and traditional reporting. You can find her work [here].

Success Attributes

As part of standards-based instruction, we are trying to separate a student's effort from a student's performance. The student success attributes give us a way of reporting on effort and responsibility without having it affect a score on a standard. In science we will use these categories for describing our science notebooks and the detail that we include in explanations. In math we are using them to reflect on things like work habits and homework completion. Right now, I am assigning a 3 for students who complete what is expected. Since a 4 means students are going above expectation, we are continuing a discussion of what a 4 means in the success attributes. 

Thank you for your patience and your questions!

The system that we are employing is new to all of us. While we are trying to make use of the system to inform you, we know that there might be some ways we are providing too much information and other ways we are providing too little information. I encourage you and your children to ask questions. As much as possible, I encourage you to channel questions through your child by helping your child to phrase the question and to bring it to class. Once the online family access is live, we won't know exactly how it is showing things to you; and your questions will help us use the too better. Of course, there are some questions that you just need to ask directly, and those are also welcome. 

Thanks for your help,

Brian MacNevin