Thursday, February 24, 2011

We began with our assessment over Adding and Subtracting Polynomials (pdf).

Today's lesson (pdf) was reviewing factoring by grouping and then exploring factoring trinomials using Algebra Tiles.

Your homework for Friday is:

1. Check the portal for the results of your assessment, fill out your student checklist with your results, and make a plan for retake (if necessary), including making an appointment.
   
   
2. Complete the Multiplying Polynomials Online Pre-Assessment.
   
   
3. Watch the Factoring ax² + bx + c video.
   
   
   
   
4. Between now and Monday, do some factoring ax²+bx+c practice, as well as factoring by grouping practice.
   
   
5. No later than by midnight on Monday, complete your reflection for parent/teacher/hopefullystudent conferences. Like last time, you should do this in a Google Doc.
   
   a) Create a new Google Doc and title it "Your Name 2nd Semester Conferences Reflection."
   
   b) Write to the following prompt (but don't be limited by it - you can write about additional stuff as well if you feel it's important):
   
   Parent/Teacher Conferences are coming up next week. Since these conferences are about you, I think you should be there. It makes very little sense to me that we should have a conference about you and you’re not there, so I’m encouraging your parents to come and to bring you with them. Please bring your Algebra notebook as well, so that we can look at your work if we need to.
   
   Whether you end up attending or not, I want you to spend some time thinking about what you want your parents to know about this class and how you are doing. Here are some questions for you to respond to (all in terms of second semester):
   
   What’s going well for you?
   
   What’s challenging for you?
   
   What could I do as your teacher that would help you be more successful?
   
   What could you do as a student that would help you be more successful?
   
   Is there anything your parents can do to help you be more successful?
   
   Is there anything else you think your parents should know about this class or about how you are doing in this class?
   
   Please be thoughtful and specific in your responses, and please don't wait until the last minute, as I want you to put some real thought into this. The more you put into it, the more valuable it will be for you, me and your parents. Thanks.
   
   c) After you've completed your response, simply drag and drop the document into our shared folder (Algebra-Fisch-YourName) - you may have to expand (by clicking on the arrow) "Collections shared with me" first in order to see the shared folder. If you need help, please ask.