Hi Everyone! This week, our students will continue their study of transformations in the coordinate plane with a particular focus on reflections. As this is a shorter week, homework will be slightly reduced to account for the time off. Particularly, the homework will consist of 23 problems on the aforementioned subject matter which breaks out to less than 6 problems per week night. Students have a brief quiz on Thursday of this week.  

This week, our eight graders will be finishing out the first chapter in our curriculum. This chapter has covered equations of various types and gave our students exposure to solving for unknown variables both purely in terms of numbers and in terms of other variables. Once we've finished chapter one, we will end the week with a brief introduction to chapter two. Covering rudimentary geometry within the coordinate plane. Specifically how to translate or "shift" figures in the coordinate plane. This week, students will be responsible for a total of three assignments; The end of chapter 1 quiz, this week's homework, and this week's performance task. 

During this third week of the year, our eighth grade students will be focusing their attention and energy on sections 1.3 and 1.4 of our curriculum. These sections will still be covering simple equations, but we will be adding on variables to both sides of our equations. This progressive dial up of complexity helps students build familiarity with the tools available to them and provides a platform for them to reflect on skills from previous years as we build into more complex material. Homework for this week will be due next Monday, it will have twenty-five problems. Additionally, we will have a short quiz on the aforementioned sections on Thursday.

Last week, we started by reviewing class, school, and pod policies. In addition, we took our beginning of year pre-course assessment. This test does not count towards your student's final grades. Rather, it's a reference point for me to use in fostering their growth throughout the course of the year. This coming week, we will start our year of learning by creating a solid base to build upon throughout the year. This will begin with one-step(linear) equations and using simple operations to solve them. These concepts will ultimately be a strong precursor to the topics that will we grow into throughout the year. The homework has 25 problems which reflect on previous years of study and will be reviewed throughout this week.

Hello Parents and welcome back to another year at Westgate. I'm excited to have the opportunity to teach your students and to help them progress in both their aptitude and enjoyment of mathematics. In this first week back, we will be starting with some administrative work in reintroducing students to the expectations of the classroom as well as providing them with an outline for what can be expected for this coming year. In the latter half of the week, we will be taking our precourse test to develop a benchmark against which we can compare student's base of knowledge at the end of the year. At the beginning of the week, I will be sending home a few documents for you to look over. Particularly, The behavior and expectations student contact for this year, the syllabus for my class, as well as my parent letter which will include several things. Included in the parent letter will be: A brief outline of my philosophy and style of teaching; best method of contact for myself; instructions on how to access assignments, grades, and helpful resources for both homework and additional practice through both Microsoft Teams and Big Ideas Math; and the role I will be asking you to play in your student's acquisition of class material throughout the year. Please review both the behavior and expectations contract as well as the class syllabus with your students. Then, sign both and have your student return them the following day. Thank you so much for the investment and care you put into your child's life and education. Please feel free to reach out if ever you need anything.