November 4th - Unit Assessments Back

Assessments are back!  Grades are posted!

Students need to fill out the scoring guide and reflection sheet for the Unit Assessment - Shapes and Designs.  They should be having a discussion with parents on what they did well on and areas they need to improve on.  A make-up assessment is possible if the grade is below a 85/B-.

Here is a link to the reflection and scoring guide. 

Study, Study, Study!

Studying for tomorrow's test? All seventh graders spent time today reviewing and took home practice questions to help them prepare for tomorrow's assessment on the Shapes and Designs unit.

Here is a key with many questions done out so that you can check your work while you practice.

If you have any lingering questions or want to check in before the quiz, please come up to the 7th Grade wing tomorrow morning from 7:00-7:35am. There will be study support happening in at least one of the math classrooms.

Investigation 3.4 and Test Review

Today we looked at parallel lines, a transversal and vertical angles.

Focus Question: When two parallel lines are cut by a transversal, what can be said about the eight angles formed?

Here is an image to look at how to view a transversal.  Students had some great ideas looking at the 360 degrees created by the angles 1, 2, 3 and 4.  They also had some interesting comments about many supplementary angles such as 1 and 2, 5 and 8, 1 and 4, 4 and 3 to name a few.  Finally, they came away with the idea that opposite angles are congruent, also known as vertical angles, such as angles 8 and 6 or angles 5 and 7.

Here is a link to the study guide for Thursday's Assessment

Click here to access.

Monday October 21st - Wednesday October 23rd - Investigation 3.1 and 3.2

In the Investigations 3.1 and 3.2 the focus questions were:

• What combinations of three side lengths can be used to create a triangle? (Inv 3.1)
• What are the exact number of side length and angle measurements needed to draw an exact copy of a triangle. (Inv 3.2)

Here are some pictures of the kids working with polystrips creating different triangles with different side lengths chosen from a random number generator.

The following are the links to the notes from class as well as the ACE Problems for 3.1 and Inv 3.2 Notes.

October 15th and 16th - Investigation 2.3 Review and Investigation 2.4

Students worked through investigation 2.3 in their text - Tiling and Tessellating.
We reviewed the ideas of what allows different polygons to tile or tessellate.
Students came away with the idea that if interior angles are factors of 360 that they can be combined to tile or tessellate.

Students came away with some amazing patterns and here are some examples.

After they completed the ACE Problems students confirmed their knowledge with the following Check-in.  Check-in Investigation 2.3 click here to access

In Investigation 2.4 they learn about the exterior angles of polygons.

Wednesday October 2nd

Students summarized and reviewed Investigation 2.1 today looking at formulas to find the sum or angles and each individual angle in regular polygons.

Here are the notes from the Check-in 2.1 we completed at the start of class. 

We also went over the homework form last night ACE Problem 2.1 # 1, 2, 17 and 18.
Here are the notes from that discussion.  I want the kids to see the expectation of work shown within their answers.  This serves as an example.


Finally here are the answers to the Skills Review Sheet #1-4 so you can check your answers for Friday's Assessment.
Skills Review #1-4 Answers
and
More Skills Review #1-4

Good luck and study well!

Monday September 30 and Tuesday October 1st- Investigation 2.1

We are covering Investigation 2.1 in Shapes and Designs.

The focus question is: What is the size of each angle and the sum of all angles in a regular polygon with n sides?

The students will review what is important in a polygon and how regular and irregular polygons compare.  The goal is for students to develop formulas the sum of interior angles for a polygon of n sides.

Homework:
ACE Problems # 1, 2, 17, and 18 starting on page 52.

Monday September 23rd - Wednesday September 25th

Skill Sheet #4 was handed out and there will be a skills quiz on next Friday (10/4) covering the topics from the first four weeks of skill sheets. The best way for students to review will be to redo the skill sheets from the first four weeks. We will send out more information on this quiz next week.

We will have our first math quiz of the year over Investigation 1 in our CMP book, Shapes & Designs. Quiz topics include finding the measures of angles, classifying polygons into groups using sides and angles, drawing a triangle given specific measurements, and finding supplementary and complementary angles.  The best way to review for this would be to go over Investigation 1.3 half-sheets and the review sheet we completed today in class.

Week of September 16th

During this week the students worked through Investigations 1.4 and 1.5.

Investigation 1.4 works with the following Focus Question:

Students are shown how to work with an angle ruler and protractor.  Please see the below examples:

Investigation 1.5 works with the following Focus Question:

Some problems challenge you to use tools to draw figures that are only described in words.  For those problems students can use line and angle rulers or protractors to accurately draw side lengths and angle measures.

Thursday and Friday, September 12th and 13th - Investigation 1.3

Today we launched and explored Investigation 1.3 - Estimating Measures of Rotations and Angles.  

Here is the Focus Question for today:

Students learned that two rays with common endpoint form two rotation angles.  One of them being the initial side and the other being the terminal.  Reviewing back to the previous lesson the angles measure from the initial side counterclockwise to the terminal side.

Students needed to complete Problem 1.3 on pages 16-17 and then ACE Problems #10-18.

Wednesday September 11th - Investigation 1.2

We started class with the daily routine of looking at Skill Sheet #2 and any questions that come with it. You can access Skill Sheet #2 by clicking here.

Here are the notes we took as students had questions on specific problems.


Today students looked at the question, "What are some of the benchmark angles?"

Students were exposed to vocabulary words such as:

• acute
• obtuse
• initial side
• terminal side
• degrees
• right angle 
• straight angle

Here are some of the notes taken from today's class.

We ended by playing a connect four game.  Lets see if our students can defeat their parents!

September 10th - Tuesday

September 10th - Tuesday

Diving into polygons!

In the first section of Shapes and Designs, students spent time defining the characteristics of polygons. Ask your student, "What makes a shape a polygon?" These shapes have some specific properties!

Next, the everyone got some hands-on time, looking at a variety of shapes and categorizing them. Most groups categorized the shapes by the number of sides they had, but then many expanded those further into sub-categories. How many different categories can there be for quadrilaterals (four-sided polygons)?

Here are some notes taken from Investigation 1.1.

Here are some Ducks hard at work!

How many different categories can there be for quadrilaterals (four-sided polygons)?

First Unit of Study - Shapes and Designs

Today we handed out the first Unit Textbook to our students!
Our first Unit of Study will be:

We will cover the following Common Core Standards-

All Investigations - 7.EE.A.2 Understand that rewriting an expression in different forms in a problem context can shed light on the problem and how the quantities in it are related.

Investigation 2 - 7.EE.B.4 Use variables to represent quantities in a real-world or mathematical problem, and construct simple equations and inequalities to solve problems by reasoning about the quantities. 

Investigation 2 -  7.G.A.2 Draw (freehand, with ruler and protractor, and with technology) geometric shapes with given conditions. Focus on constructing triangles from three measures of angles or sides, noticing when the conditions determine a unique triangle, more than one triangle, or no triangle. 

Investigations 1, 2, and 3 -  7.G.B.5 Use facts about supplementary, complementary, vertical, and adjacent angles in a multi-step problem to write and solve simple equations for an unknown angle in a figure.

Parent Letter for Unit 1 - Shapes and Designs

Here is the parent letter for Unit 1 - Shapes and Designs.