eMath October 2017 Newsletter

Happy October to all!!! The weather in upstate New York is starting to get colder and the trees are finally changing color. As the holiday season approaches (my son considers Halloween to be the first legitimate holiday), we have been busy working on a variety of different things at eMATHinstruction.

Without further ado, let’s get right into the add-ons for this month. Our Common Core Algebra I Add-Ons consist of a performance task and a mid-unit quiz. We’ve created a Unit #4 Performance Task on Linear Modeling. This isn’t a lengthy assessment but it will give teachers a good sense for how well students understand linear modeling and how they react in a situation that is somewhat non-routine. We’ve included a sample rubric for the teacher, but teachers may want to create their own. We’ve also created a mid-unit quiz for Unit #5 – Systems of Linear Equations. This quiz (with two forms of it) covers through Lesson #4 (up to and including the Elimination Method).

The Common Core Geometry add-ons for this month can be found under the Unit Reviews and Unit Assessments. This month we published both the Unit #4 (Constructions) and Unit #5 (Coordinate Geometry) Reviews and Assessments. The Construction Unit Review is long and contains all of the classic constructions (up to this point) as well as applications of these constructions (such as reflecting a point across a line). The assessment for this unit is understandably a bit different. We plan to publish one or two unit reviews and assessments per month until all have been completed. We plan to have them all finished by the March add-on round at the latest.

We did something a bit different for Common Core Algebra II Add-Ons this month. We went back and recorded videos for two Unit #4 add-ons lessons we had already created, specifically Lesson 7.5 on Exponential Modeling Revisited and Lesson 15 on Asymptotes of Exponential and Logarithmic functions. We’ve modified the worksheets so that they now contain the QR Codes for the videos. Did you know that the newest OS on the iPhone has an automatic QR reader built into the Camera app? It’s true. All a student, with the latest OS on an iPhone, has to do is point their camera at a QR code as if they were taking a picture of it and the link will open to our video. As well, we also created a lesson on factoring trinomials using the “AC” method, i.e. the product and sum considerations of a trinomial. We are considering recording a video for that an another Algebra II lesson for next month’s add-ons.

Finally, for Algebra 2 and Trigonometry Add-Ons this month we created two forms of a Unit #4 quiz. This unit is on Radicals and the Quadratic Formula. The two forms of the quiz cover all topics through work with the quadratic formula (through Lesson #7).

In other eMATHinstruction news, we ran a contest this month to gauge the interest level in having me come and teach for a day at a school. Over 100 schools gave us feedback on Facebook. We had a drawing about a week ago and Ward Melville High School in the Three Village District on Long Island won the drawing. So, I’ll be headed there in mid-December to teach some classes and talk with students. I’m really looking forward to the visit! We are hoping to do another one of these drawings in the spring. Maybe I’ll be coming to your district to do some Regents Review. Who knows?

We have just begun very preliminary work on our Common Core Algebra I App (or eBook). We are working on all sorts of functionality for our new electronic only textbook. Included will be a button to allow problems to be read to the student (or sub parts of problems), the ability to play a video showing the solution to a lesson problem (instead of having to watch the whole video), and the ability for teachers to be able to turn the answer key on and off for given lessons, avoiding the need to separately purchase the answer key subscription. We hope to have an initial prototype of the book done by the end of the academic year and to have it fully functioning by the time the Next Generation Math Standards go into effect in New York State (2020-2021?).

That’s it for now. I hope that the school year is progressing well for everyone, students and teacher alike. New school years always bring surprises, both positive and negative. As always, if you have any questions, concerns, or other feedback don’t hesitate to contact me at [email protected].