Math+-+8th+Grade+-+Meeting+Notes

We each went through the exam and answered the questions this past week. Today we went through it to compare answers and make changes as needed.
 * June 9th:**

We got the final exam typed up.
 * June 2nd:**

We talked about the final exam, and what we wanted the content to be on. (10% for each C&S, MSA, F&W, 70% LFP).
 * May 26th:**

Steve out today, Taunya at an IEP. Anne and Laura looked at the labsheets with the puzzle pieces to help students visually see a proof of the Pythagorean Theorem. We also looked for videos online to help demonstrate it, and found one at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAkMUdeB06o&NR=1
 * May 19th:**

-We looked at LFP, and talked about which sections we didn't do last year (2.2, 3.2). -We'll move through the unit, and try to get through as much of it as possible.
 * May 12th:**


 * May 5th:** Laura out

-We're all giving the F&W unit test this week, will compare results once all are done and graded. -Looked ahead to Pythagoras.
 * April 28th:**

Laura at Common Core Math Standards mtg at C.O.; no meeting
 * April 14th:**

8th grade field trip, no mtg.
 * April 7th:**

We looked at the grade 8 GLE's from the NECAP. We started to look through our indiv. group scores.
 * March 31st:**

We talked about how students are doing with Investigation 1 of F&W. We shared ideas on what helping the students learn the content and skills.
 * March 24th:**

__Hints for F&W Invest 1:__
 * March 17th:**
 * Have MANY copies of the inch and cm grid paper for students to use when testing nets (these can be found on the disks).
 * Have students label or color the individual faces when drawing nets.
 * Anne's suggestions: 1.) On the nets, label where the length, width, and height are. 2.) Force the kids to develop their our S.A. formulas rather than just giving it to the kids.
 * Website from Taunya: www.factmonster.com (baseball geometry:and then a variety of different games to choose from)

__Where are we?__ Laura: in invest. 1 (kids are in various sections) Anne: doing 1.4 tomorrow Steve: did Problem 1.3 today Taunya: doing 1.4 tomorrow

- We're doing Invest 1-3 of F&W. - We talked about where students struggled in MSA. - Hints/suggestions:
 * March 10th:**
 * use the lock boxes for problem 1.4. (will fit on the cm grid paper)
 * use the inch grid paper when students are testing cubic nets (problem 1.1)

-We went over our answers from each taking the MSA unit test. We went through the test and talked about scoring per question.
 * March 3rd:**

February 24th: no meeting, vacation wek

February 17th: no meeting, working on HS recs

February 10th, 2011: MSA Unit Test- Laura had blank copies for everyone. For next week, everyone to actually "take" the test. Then we'll talk about answers and what we expect for answers next week. Anne to make copies of her 100% blank test.

February 3rd, 2011: -Taunya and Anne were absent, just Laura and Steve met. Laura and Matt had met earlier in the week to look at how the CMP books aligned with the new common core standards. Steve and Laura talked about teaching fewer units in more depth vs. teaching more units with less depth. We need to look ahead to Filling and Wrapping to see which investigations we plan to teach (we only did 2 I think last year).

January 27, 2011: -Where are we? Anne and Taunya to give Invest 4 quiz on Monday 1/31. Laura has started in on Invest 3. Steve was in another meeting, so was not able to attend our PLC meeting. -For next week: looking ahead to the unit test.

January 20, 2011: -We went through and scored our Invest 4 quiz. We looked at some student examples from Laura's class, and talked about how we'd score certain answers.

January 13th, 2011: -looked at MSA invest 4 quiz that Laura put together -re-worded some questions, re-formatted some parts

January 6th, 2011 -We looked through the Additional Skills and Practice book and other resources to pull out questions to use on a quiz for Investigation 4. Laura will put these questions into a quiz, and have copies ready for next week's meeting.

December 16th, 2010

1.) MSA Invest 2 quiz -last question: leave question as is, change Michael's speed to 3 meters per second -scoring: we went through and gave point values for each question, and talked about expectations (showing work, labeling answers, etc)

2.) MSA invest 3 & 4 -Following Investigation 2, teach 4.1 - 4.3, then 3.1 - 3.5, then 4.4

December 9th, 2010:

1.) Tanya mentioned that she can see a difference between her two different classes, as far as how the kids are doing. Steve gave a quick quiz over 1.1 and 1.2 today, but has yet to really look at them yet. She had students share their solving strategies today in class, and was amazed at the variety of ways students solved Problem 2.1.

2.) Anne felt that her kids did well on the MSA Invest 1 quiz, she felt that from looking at them, her kids really grasped the major goals of the investigation. Laura said that her kids had a tough time with the equations and graphs on the quiz.

3.) Steve is on Problem 1.3, Tanya is on 2.1.

December 2nd, 2010: 1.) __budget__ all set! 2.) __MSA invest. 1:__ We're all towards the end of Invest 1, using graphs to answer questions, introduction of y=mx + b with just $ per km vs. $ per km plus a donation. Referring back to "Variables & Patterns" from last year.

November 25th (Thanksgiving)

November 18th, 2010: 1.) Are there any AV items that we would want to purchase? 2.) Looking at C&S Test- there were some questions that the wording seemed "tricky". Getting kids to really READ the question vs. skimming it. 3.) MSA unit : Taunya had the unit test, which was re-arranged and formatted from Falmouth MS. She'll make copies for us.

June 3rd: -Books for next year, what are we teaching? C&S was supposed to become a 7th grade book, but they didn't get to it this year. Do we teach it again, or do next year's 8th graders not do that unit altogether? How many units are we expected to get through next year? Laura will e-mail Cynthia about these questions.

-Where are we in Looking for Pythagoras? Mike finished invest 3, Art is finishing with invest 3 on Monday, Anne's just about finished with invest 3 too, Laura finished today.

-Next week: Mike's going to do invest 4, Laura and Art to do year review for finals, Anne ....? (absent today)

CMP doesn't account for time to review/go over HW assignments. Which is more beneficial, moving forward or taking time to go over the ACE?

-Comparing & Scaling: What can we cut out. 1.3-cut out writing the comparison statements. Focus more on can they take the date, and determine the ratio, fraction, % of difference.

May 27th: LFP: don't do the knot activity in 3.3, the making of the triangles takes too long and doesn't have much impact. Next year: in order to get through 6 books, we'll need to cull some stuff out. We need to look at the NECAP 8th grade math standards, and align what we teach to that.

May 20th: Laura and Anne met. We talked about ways to help kids who are falling behind. We looked at Problem 3.2, and Anne shared how she had approached that investigation.

May 13th: Laura out

May 6th: no meeting

April 29th: __Looking for Pythagoras__: Mike went through and explained how he went through section 1 this week; what he was able to accomplish on each day. Art did problem 1.1 today, and said that he felt it was too easy, and that students didn't take it seriously.

We determined that we'll just move through this book, and get as far as we can.

We looked through the book, and in detail some of the problems. We talked about ways we might approach the topics, and things that we've done in the past.

April 22nd: April vacation week, no meeting.

April 15th: Laura out sick; no meeting.

April 8th: -We talked about F&W investigation 3: Mike said that it takes a long time to get through. WIth the quiz: one of the questions ask students to use a triangular prism, and Mike suggested telling students to use a rectangular prism (because they are more familiar with them.) -We also talked about where each of us are, and what we're hoping to get through before vacation.

April 1st: - Invest 1 of F&W: kids either "get it" or they don't. Invest. 2 hammers in SA and Volume a lot more. The kids haven't had much exposure to geometry, so maybe they're just very unfamiliar with it. SA: where do they get stuck? Nets: how to teach how to draw them? Build boxes and them take them apart to really understand nets. -We also talked about the math reflections at the end of each investigation. HOW do we use them in the timeline leading up to the quiz? Do we count/grade them? Formative vs. Summative assessment.

March 25th: No meeting, early release day and period 6 fell during the time when "The Kindness Guy" was here.

March 18th: No meeting, Laura and Mike at a scheduling meeting.

March 11th: We looked at the students' MSA unit tests. We went through and discussed the point vales we gave each questions, where kids were surprising us and where they seemed to be having a tough time.

We also talked about the next book, Filling and Wrapping. We looked through it and started to discuss which parts we might be able to cut out. We are supposed to get through this book, as well as Looking for Pythagorus. We're trying to figure out how we can hit the "major" topics of these two books in trimester 3. We agreed to do the first three investigations in F&W, and then evaluate where we are, and where we need to be/go.

March 4th: no meeting (swapped for team meeting which was cacnelced due to a "scheduling" meeting with Brian yesterday period 6)

February 25th: -We looked at the MSA unit test. There were some questions that we re-worded or added onto.

February 11th: -We looked at the MSA section 3 Quiz and discussed grading and where we were seeing students making problem/errors. -We quickly talked about what to teach tri 3; we have 'Filling and Wrapping' as well as 'Looking for Pythagorus' to get through. We'll re-visit this topic after vacation.

February 4th: No PLC, sound system meeting with 8th grade teachers

January 28th: -Looked at the section 3 quiz, discussed grading it. Determined it would be out of 74 possible points.

January 21st: no meeting

January 14th: 1.) Check-in, where are we in MSA? 2.) How are kids doing with graphing? 3.) Making kids manually do graphs vs an online graphing calculator.

December: no meetings due to move to new school

November 25th Thanksgiving

November 19th LB out sick, no meeting

November 12th 1. Finished our grading scale for the C&S Test.

November 5th, 2009 1.) We each took the C&S Unit Test. 2.) We then discussed how we would score/grade each question, and what we would look for. We got through question #2, so will continue next week too.

October 28th: Partner Quizzes: Mike and Laura have given the section 3 (C&S) partner quiz, discussed how we handled with. Art and Anne to give it next week. How much "help" do we give on the 2nd day? Some questions were confusing, and the question are misleading. We talked about scoring the problems, work vs the answer. We talked about stressing to the students the importance and helpfulness of being able to work with a partner. We talked a lot about how to teach proportions, and that we're tempted to teach them the process of looking at cross-products to help solve proportions, even though the book doesn't.

October 22nd: no meeting, Mike and Laura @ MAMLE

October 15th, 2009 -C&S section 2 quiz: students struggled with writing statements, didn't read the question for during the game vs after, overall seemed to get it. Mike and Laura compared scoring (points per question) per question. -We discussed pros and cons of giving the questions for the problems on worksheets versus expecting kids to look back in the book. -We discussed are shared opinions on the time constraints and wishing we had more time for this program.

October 8th: no meeting, NECAP testing

October 1st, 2009 -Looked at Moving Straight Ahead. We picked out the major ideas, and added them to our Essential Outcomes list.

September 24th -Re-taking on quizzes/tests: the never ending battle... looking at students who keep up with regular HW vs. don't, should some have the opportunity to re-take and some not? -Pacing: How to work in time to go over HW, do the problems, to the reflections, all before the quiz. More discussions in class vs doing for HW. Were we are: we're all in section 2, some are 1 problem day ahead, but all right around the same spot.

September 17th -We re-looked at the essential outcomes we had created for the CMP program last year; we'll need to add 'Moving Straight Ahead' -We looked at a quiz that Laura had made for C&S section 1. -Were are we in the book? Art: ready to do 1.3 tomorrow, Mike started 2.1 today, Laura finishing up with 1.3 and the section, will do 2.1 next Tuesday. -How to use the reflections? Are they valuable? How much time to we take for them?

June 11th (last PLC meeting of the year):

June 4th: No meeting, Laura out sick.

May 28th: We looked at the last 2 books, Thinking with Mathematical Models and Looking for Pythagororas. We looked through the 'main ideas' and unit info, and tried to pick out 2 or 3 major key points that would work as an essential outcome.

May 21st: Brian had a survey which asked us to determine where we stood as a functioning PLC. We went through the different aspects and discussed where we were on the scale. Overall, we felt that we functioned much like a true PLC should. We also discussed that fact that with changing curriculum, it has made things more difficult this year.

May 14th: Looked at Growing, Growing, Growing and Say it with Symbols. We looked through the 'main ideas' and unit info, and tried to pick out 2 or 3 major key points that would work as an essential outcome.

May 7th: 1.) Today we looked through the two 7th grade books, Filling & Wrapping and Comparing & Scaling. We looked through the 'main ideas' and unit info, and tried to pick out 2 or 3 major key points that would work as an essential outcome. 2.) We will continue this work with the other 4 books in order to compile a new list of aligned essential outcomes.

April 16th: 1.) Discussion over were we all are in the text, and what topics we hope to cover before the end of the school year. 2.) We determined that we are all giving finals this year, but the formats will differ by teacher.

March 5, 12, 19, 26, April 2, 9 We have spent these 6 PLC times, as well as the early release day on 3/26, numbering the new math textbooks.

February 26, 2009 We spent today's meeting sorting through the new 8th grade math textbooks. We grouped the student materials by unit, and the teacher materials by who gets what teaching materials.

February 12, 2009 During today's meeting, we discussed HS recs for next year. The HS has taken out pre-calculus and added Alg 1A and 1B. We talked about estimate numbers as far as how many students we think we would be recommending for Alg 1 vs 1A. We also discussed how we each are progressing with teaching slope. Our goal was for each team to give the Slope common assessment by Friday, Febrary27th.

February 5th, 2009 Today's meeting dealt with the aspects of MEA. We dicussed ways of helpings kids to improve upon their short answer and constructed response answers. We want to get students to EXPLAIN their answers in hopes of them scoring 1 more point (from a 1 to a 2, from a 2 to a 3 etc.) We also discussed graphing lines, and how our students are doing with learning that topic/skill.

January 29, 2009 We brought teaching materials (worksheets etc) that we have used in the past that cover graphing equations and slope. We shared these with each other, and Anne brought materials from the CMP2 book that also covers these topics. We also discussed teaching strategies that have worked and not worked in the past.

January 22, 2009 By the end of today's meeting, we had outlined 3 topics that we wanted to expose all 8th grade students to before the MEA's come around. These topics include: graphing equations, finding the slope of a line, and knowing the slope-intercept form of a line. There was much discussion about how this is "teaching to the test". Discussion also revolved around how teaching these 3 topics would be jumping through the book and that some other skills (operations with negative numbers) might need to be taught alongside these topics. By the end of the meeting, we came up with a time line for teaching these topics before the MEA.

January 15, 2009 Today's meeting was spent responding to an e-mail from Cynthia Martin regarding the new textbooks. Cynthia was given the OK to orfer the books now, instead of later in the school year. We discussed the importance for training before teaching out of the new books next year; the training is supposed to be this summer. We also discussed and brainstormed storage issued for these books until we are using them. Art volunteered to have all 8th grade materials stored in his portable.

January 8, 2009 -We looked ahead to Module 3, talked about creating an common assessment for some of those topics. -We reviewed our 20 essential outcomes. -We looked at the common assessment over slope that was created last year, talked about areas where students had a tough time, reviewed what we felt was necessary to cover in that topic.

December 18th, 2008 -We looked at the common assessments we've given this year (Solving Equations, Writing Expressions and Equations) and calculated the percentage of our students who "met the standards'. This data was given to Brian.

December 11, 2008 -Looked at Percent of Change, talked about how we teach it, looked at a past quiz that Laura had.

December 4th, 2008 -Discussed the CMP II units/books that we thought would be best for our 8th grades. -Anne provided us with her input since using the books this year and in past years in other districts.

November 6, 2008 -Looked at Writing Expressions and Equations Summative Assessment. -Discussed errors that were commonly made amung all 8th graders -Discussed how picky we were when scoring the assessments. -Looked at students' tests from each other's teams -Discussed teaching strategies for this topic

October 30, 2008 -Discussed my notes from MEA conference last week.

October 23, 2008 -no meeting, Ms. Bartlett at MEA conference

October 16, 2008 -We went through the "Writing Expressions and Equations Summative Assessment" and discussed how we will all be scoring/grading it.

October 10, 2008

Unwrapping activity

We chose to unwrap the following essential outcome:

“Translate English phrases and sentences into algebraic expressions and equations.”

Skill—Translate

Concepts—English phrases and sentences into algebraic expressions & equations

Topics— pre-assessment formative assessment (classwork & homework) appropriate vocabulary activities use text examples and assignments summative assessment

October 2, 2008 -Looked at 2 common assessments from last year, talked about scoring them. -Started to look at Module 2 to see if any skills align with Anne's CMP upcoming skills -Talked about working more with NWEA topics and creating common assessments to cover skills areas on those tests.

September 25, 2008 -Discussed the questions from last week's meeting with Brian.

-Discussed what our focus should be -continue to create formative assessments for all 3 of us to use this year -work with Anne to compare our 20 essential outcomes to CMP2

-Next meeting: look at the assessments we created last year

September 18, 2008 1. Meetings will run from 12:45-1:15

2. Discussion around goals/objectives -Should we be using our time to make assessments for a book that won’t be being used next year? -Can we get materials for the new 8th grade books and use our time looking through those? Maybe make assessments that align with that program? -Could we also work with Anne to learn about the new math program and how she’s finding it to work this year? -How do we run our meetings when three of us are teaching out of the Math Thematics book, and one is using Connected Math? -Could we still use PLC time to discuss instructional strategies for teaching out of the Math Thematics book and/or skills that are covered in both math textbooks?

5/15

discussed teaching techniques of the pythagorean theorem discussed plans for teaching lessons the rest of year(not enough time to finish next module discussed relative merites of aggregating and disaggregating NWEA stores.

4/10 each teacher graded 2 of mike's students tests blindly to "corroborate" grading practices looked at common mistakes Will do more analysis next week after Art's students take tests

4/3 Discussed explicitly our teaching techniques for covering slope Each of us takes approximately 4 days. Laura is finished, and art and I are starting Art - introduces slope by having kids graph 4 lines of varying steepness as a review of earlier work. Then discusses "sign" of slope and "steepness." Then uses rise over run technique, then uses algebraic formula for calculation. Takes 2 lecture days appoximately Laura uses graph of 12 lines assignment, then graphing of two points and use the line for slope, then use application questions from exploration and book on problems using speed and hourly rate.

Mike follows exploration( 2 days), has one day of lecture notes, then one day reviewing application questions

Next week - look at results of quiz and compare 3/27 demonstrated slope slider and graph it as learning tools discussed specific grading of questions on assessment for slope discussed learning activities for the teaching of slope

1) overhead of 12 lines of all varieties - calculate slope of them all

2) exploration from book

more next week. 3/20/08 Thursday PLC meeting period 6 discussed concepts we would like to cover while teaching slope discussed questions that should be asked on the quizzes nalized: 6 lines one with positive slope greater than 1 one positive slope less than 1 one negative slope\ one horizontal line one vertical line

application problems: babysitting problems or walking rates. read graph interperet which rate is higher calculate exact rate via slope

3/17/08 Met after large group meeting. Mr. O'Brien had a prior committment. We investigated the uses of the wikki space

decided to bring all learning activities to next class