eMath December Newsletter

Well, it definitely feels and looks a lot like winter here in Red Hook, New York. It’s cold and snowy outside, but things are continuing to heat up at eMATHinstruction. We’ve got a lot of news, including a new round of add-ons and updates on Common Core Geometry. Let me get right to it.

In our latest Common Core Algebra I Add-Ons, we continue to crank out the Form B assessments based on the positive feedback we’ve been getting. We’ve heard teachers will give both tests during a class period or even slice and dice them up together. So, we do plan to continue to come out with these each month. For this month, we have both a Unit #6 and Unit #7 Form B assessment. As well, we also published a very basic lesson and homework set on percents (creatively entitled Percent Warm-Up). I’ve found over the years that many students are not ready for high school lessons on percents without a basic reminder of what they mean and how they related to ratios and proportions.

For Common Core Algebra II Add-Ons, its much of the same.  We have new Form B assessments for both Units #8 and #9. We have been trying to make these as close to possible to the original tests so that teachers can truly use them as either makeups or for the full class in a mix-it up scenario. We also thought, since we were at Unit #8, to put together a nice set of review problems for the course as a whole. So, we came up with a six page Mid-Course Review problem set. This set certainly doesn’t cover every important problem or topic, because then it would be 20 pages, but it is a nice sampling of problems. We thought it would be ideal for either a Winter Break assignment or perhaps even during January Regents week, depending on where you are in the course.

Finally, there are the Algebra 2 with Trigonometry Add-Ons.  It’s all about Unit #7 this month. This is a long unit that begins a three unit swing through trigonometry. Because of the length of the unit, we’ve included a mid-unit quiz and a Formative assessment for it. But, the fun add-on for this month is a graphing activity on Desmos where students model the length of daylight as a function of the day of the year in Poughkeepsie, New York and Brisbane, Australia. I love Desmos for data modeling because I enter the data once and only once and then simply give students a link to the Desmos page so they can try to fit the data. Don’t worry, though. If you want to use this activity, and it is a really fun one, you don’t even need to enter the data. I’ve already done it for you.

The big news for this month is that Common Core Geometry is done and now in its Beta testing version. That’s just my way of saying that the entire rough draft is done and posted online. Here’s how the table of contents is looking:

I’ve written about the first draft of it here so I don’t bore you more with details. I’m now hard at work on the answer key for Geometry. We are working on a new recording space for the Geometry videos and will likely begin in early February. I’m very much looking forward to getting back to that side of things, although both the text and even the answer key have been a lot of fun.

O.k. That’s it for now. I need to add more logs to the fire and get back to working on that Geo answer key. Thank you to everyone for feedback. And I’d like to thank everyone who has given our curriculum a chance and has supported us. As always, let me know if you have any thoughts: [email protected].

Have a safe and happy holiday season!!!