Weekly Objectives for 4/21/14 - 4/25/14

Overview - Welcome back to school.  I hope that everyone enjoyed their time off.  It's time to get back in gear.  Over the next two weeks the students in writing class will focus on the NYS Math Exam.  I will be infusing test taking skills into my lessons that will prepare them for the rigorous sections within the booklets.  We will focus on writing short response answers to the multiple step questions that are posed to the students.  We are hoping that the students will grasp a greater understanding of the math concepts and be able to explain how each math problem has been worked out to a correct result.  
        Monday - 4/21/14 - We focused on positive and negative integers, along with understanding their opposites on a number line.  Students were exposed to various integers in real world situations.  They were then expected to explain how to compare and contrast their values.
        Tuesday - 4/22/14 - Today, the students moved forward with positive and negative numbers.  They were shown how to order and compare varying rational integers.  We focused on a larger positive number being smaller when when it is the opposite of itself.  We also learned how to order fractions by finding their common denominators and comparing their positive/negative values.  The students had to explain all of their answers, as usual, in a descriptive format.
        Wednesday - 4/23/14 - All of the lessons in writing during the year have focused on making claims and supporting them with warranted evidence.  Today in Math, students had to decide whether "real-world" problems were correct or not.  After drawing number lines, comparing fractions and plotting them,  they were required to use their writing skills to create an evidence based response.  We really enjoyed attacking the problems with our previous writing skills.  The students were able to see how skills cross all content areas.
         Thursday - 4/24/14 - In writing, the students learned how to write inequality statements using integers.  We first introduced the "greater than" and "less than" symbols, before modeling how to turn these symbols into sentences.  The student were then given real world problems to solve using these new skills.
         Friday - 4/25/14 - Today we focused on the absolute value of integers and how to read distances on a number line.  Students were given examples of problems that involved positive and negative numbers.  They learned that all numbers have an absolute value that sets the unit distance from zero.  We then were able to apply these principles into real problems that required extended written responses.  It was really neat to see them apply their evidence based writing skills into mathematical processes.