Day Two of the 2007-2008 School Year

Today's objectives revolved around clarifying this weekend's home nugget assignment #1 which is due on Monday. There are five components to the lesson and it was important for students to be clear on expectations for these. I re-posted the home nugget below then followed it with some clarifying notes.

1. Commit the five essentials for success in the math classroom to memory in preparation for a quiz next week. Focus on the highlighted areas in particular.
2. Return all of the following paperwork filled out completely and signed when applicable:
Syllabus (keep one copy and return the other)
General Student Information Sheet
3. Have all materials with the exception of the graphing calculator (due by Oct. 1) as described in the materials list.
4. Log onto the web log site at www.obryantmath7.blogspot.com and answer the following question in an email, which you will send to me at nkhodjat@gmail.com. Question: Briefly describe the posting for Thursday September 6. Be sure to include your full name and homeroom number in the email.
5. Look back over the two websites you were supposed to have explored over the summer in preparation for entrance to the 7th grade. Remember that the summer assignments can be found at http://obryant.us/. You will be quizzed as to what these sites were about next week.

Item #1 can and will include accountability for material on all handouts provided thus far. For example, students should know how they are graded each term (found on the syllabus) and what the purpose of the non-negotiables is (found on the letter to students).
Items 2 and 3 were reviewed in class today with the help of an InFocus Projector and students were shown exactly how to access and use the information.
IMPORTANT TO NOTE: You must have an email account in order to email me at nkhodjat@gmail.com. Simply clicking on the link WILL NOT WORK as you are defaulted to Outlook Express.

The second half of class was committed to what is known as "accountable talk", that is, the key elements of having productive, meaningful and quite sophisticated conversation in the math classroom. We used the following problem to illustrate the principals of "accountable talk".

Three consecutive odd numbers add up to 417. What are the three numbers?