It's Been Awhile!

So here we are post-parent conferences!

I want to take a moment now when I can breathe a little easier and tell you more about where we are at in Pre-Algebra as we look into Trimester 3.

We've finished our work in the Jacobs text.  This meant working hard in Chapter 1 and breezing through Chapter 2.  I like to hit Chapter 1 hard to give the kids the experience of using a text like Jacobs and I treat the skills in Chapter 2 much like I do other Pre-Algebra material (introduce skills, practice, assess).  Also, I know that the kids will get to experience number sequences again and again in their lives... but billiard tables?!  That's just too cool to pass up.  :)

So you should have seen that lovely blue-green Algebra text reappear at your houses.  We've jumped back into the middle of the second chapter in that book with a review on integers.  The past few days/nights of work have been on adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing integers.  I like to think of integers as the multiplication facts of Pre-Al.  You remember how everything in math got that much easier when you were able to quickly recall those math facts?  Once your kids master integers, all these stinking equations will suddenly start to make more sense!

If you look past those sections on integers you'll see a few sections on two-step equations which is where we'll spend a LARGE chunk of our time coming up.

Afterwards, we'll work on our "Properties" unit--commutative, associative, distributive, and identity.  This lets us learn about combining like terms, which is a really big deal in Pre-Al.

And finally we'll get to graphing lines on the coordinate plane.  When we get here, we may do a little dance to congratulate ourselves because we will have made it to the end of Pre-Algebra!

There will be a cumulative final exam that will last two days and will probably fall in the first or second week of May.  The kids know its coming, but I've been trying to not let them freak out about it yet.  I use it as just another tool to help me and them understand what they know and what they still haven't gelled on yet.

I hope this posting finds you all well!