Week 16 - Contest Results

Math Contest Results
The results are in!  Mr. Mintz, the math contest coordinator, has the full results, but shared with me the top three winners of our school.  Remember, the test had 25 questions.

1st Place: Alex Broering (8th grade) with a score of 19
2nd Place: Rajan Lad (6th grade) with a score of 17
3rd Place: Riley Stokes (6th grade) with a score of 16

Congratulations!  In addition to ranking within the school, Riley and Rajan both earned Achievement Roll (15+ for 6th grade) and Rajan earned Honor Roll (17+ overall).  Again, congratulations!  Hopefully, I will have a full score report soon for every student that participated.

Friday Sub
This Friday, I will be on campus in an all day Intervention Collaboration Meeting.  I have requested Mr. Shannon (retired principal) and hopefully he will be available.  Students will be taking a quiz on this day and working either on their Problem of the Week, Algebra Tiles, or Balance Scales afterwards.

This Week
This week, we will be diving into more percent problems.  On Monday and Tuesday, we will work on percent increase/decrease problems and on Wednesday and Thursday, we will apply those to store mark-up and discount word problems.

Homework for this week is as follows:
Monday (11/28) - Bring an example of a discount (coupon, sale advertisement, etc.)
Tuesday (11/29) -  WB 6-5 #2, 4, 6, 18, 20
Wednesday (11/30) - Unit 3 Quiz 4 Practice Problems #1 - 3
Thursday (12/1) - Unit 3 Quiz 4 Practice Problems #4 - 7
Friday (12/2) - Problems of the Week #14: Number Riddles

Week 15 - Thanksgiving

Math Contest Participants
Thank you to all of the students who participated in the American Mathematics Contest.  This is John Muir's second entry year and we had an excellent turn out!  Out of the 47 students that entered, 23 came from my classes.  My students who participated each received a participation award, a pencil, and some Smarties.  They were Samuel Lim, Jacob Keselman, Allison Ngo, Jim Falcone, Joseph Monge, Alex Torres, Taylor Nittler, Anila Ebrahimi, William Dayton, Angelo Arriaga, Brittany Bastida, Jimmy Roe, Rajan Lad, Luke Trinh, Ryan Chi, Jacob Hernacki, Riley Stokes, Emily Cole, Sophia Nguyen, Amy Nguyen, Chloe Ross, Karanbir Sandhu, and Khush Amin.  Congratulations to all of our participants!

Monday Sub
I will be in training on Monday.  Mrs. Myers, a former math teacher, will be working with the students on the relationship between fractions, decimals, and percent.  Students should be prepared to take notes and copy their homework for the week.

Office Hour Change (for this week only)
Since I will be in training until 4pm on Monday and there is a minimum day on Wednesday, I will not be having my regular office hours.  Instead, I will have office hours on Tuesday until 3:15pm.

This Week
This week we will be working on the relationship between fractions, decimals, and percents, especially finding percents of numbers.

Homework for the week is as follows:
Monday (11/21) - WB 6-1 #2, 3, 10, 15, 20
Tuesday (11/22) - TB Pg. 315 #5, 8, 15, 16, 17
Wednesday (11/23) - Problem of the Week #13: Graphiti

Week 14 - Interim Assessments

Math Contest
On Tuesday, John Muir will be participating in the second annual middle school math contest.  Students of all grades are invited to participate.  This contest is a 25 question test and will be held in the cafeteria right after school on Tuesday.  Winners for each grade level will be announced and awarded.  The contest should end by 3:30pm.  Only the first 50 students to arrive at the cafeteria at 2:12pm will be allowed to participate, so come early!


Interim Assessments
On Thursday and Friday, we will be taking a district-wide interim assessment.  This is a cumulative test of the 6th grade math curriculum.  The purpose is to see if students are on track for the CST in May and project what score they would get if they were given the exam now.  Some of the material should be easy and some of the material has not been covered yet.  This test does not count for a grade, but is simply a good indicator.  Remember: these students are studying the Pre-Algebra curriculum, which is 7th grade math, but will be taking the 6th grade math CST and 6th grade math interim assessment.

This Week
This week we will continue our study of ratios, rates, and proportions through the lens of scale drawings and scale models.  Since we didn't have a quiz last week and Thursday and Friday are reserved for the interim assessments, we will have our quiz on Wednesday this week.  This Wednesday's quiz will cover 3 lessons in chapter 5 (5-5: Similar Figures, 5-6: Indirect Measurement, 5-7: Scale Drawings and Scale Models).

Homework for the week is as follows:
Monday (11/14): TB Pg. 254 #10, 14, 15
Tuesday (11/15): Unit 3 Quiz 3 Practice Problems
Wednesday (11/16): Problem of the Week #12
Thursday (11/17): No HW (Interim Assessments)
Friday (11/18): Now HW (Interim Assessments)

Week 13 - Veteran's Day

Veteran's Day

Not only is this Friday Veteran's Day, which means that there is no school for students, but there is also no school on Thursday for students because the teachers have a Staff Development day on Thursday.  There will be no quiz this week.  Instead, it will be on Wednesday next week (11/16).



Interim Assessments

Next Thursday and Friday (11/17 and 11/18) are reserved for interim assessments.  These tests are cumulative of the 6th grade math curriculum (not the 7th grade Pre-Algebra course that we are currently studying).  The reason for this assessment is to measure the progress of students on the CST exam they will take in the spring.  Since all sixth grade students, regardless of the math course they are enrolled in, will be taking the 6th grade math CST, all sixth grade students will take the 6th grade math interim assessment.  This assessment is more of a progress report for the teachers and will not be counted in student's grades.  It is an indicator of how well the student would do on the CST if it were administered today.  We will do this again once more in early spring before the CST.

This Week

This week, we will continue our study of proportions through investigation of similar figures and indirect measurement.  

Homework for the week is as follows:

Monday (11/7) - WB 5-5 # 1, 2, 5, 6

Tuesday (11/8) - TB Pg. 246 #4, 5, 6

Wednesday (11/9) - Problem of the Week #11 Pizza Palace