Cluster One Math Class

Week of March 31, 2025

Cluster One Math grades are current and up to date: The test on Unit Six and last week's iXL homework have been graded and entered into PowerSchool. I will backfill grades from late homework this week as time allows.

This week, the School will administer the English Language Arts section of the MCAS to the 8th and 7th grades. This means two things for Cluster One Math Class: 1) We arrive at school at 11:00, instead of 7:45 on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and classes will be 30 minutes each; and 2) shorter classes mean that Lessons 4, 5, 6, and 7 will be concentrated on one idea, a single concept. So we will have a quiz on Friday the 4th on Absolute Value, rather than moving on to Section B, which involves wrtiting and graphing inequalities. Keeping in mind our goal is to finish Unit Seven and most of Unit Eight by the end of April. We will be taking the 6th Grade MCAS on May 12th and 13th.

This week we will be introduced to the idea of Absolute Value. Absolute Value, in Grade 6, is simply the distance from zero. It is a concept of magnitude rather than relative position. Unfortunately, students are still struggling with the idea that on a number line, as we go from right to left or upper to lower, the numbers get smaller: negative ten (-10) is smaller than negative one (-1). And now, we are to see that the Absolute Value of negative ten is greater than the Absolute Value of negative one. A number can be both bigger and smaller than another, at the same time! This is less about the utility of a math idea in some profession or trade, and more about building flexibility in our thinking and seeing that we can adapt math to our uses, depending on the context.

This is the basic difference of our math curriculum, the competitive advantage of what and how we teach students in the Lynn Public Schools: it's not about how to operate the equipment, it's how and why the equipment works as it does! The sad reality we face is that the standardized test we administer, the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, tests on procedural fluency rather than conceptual understanding and synthesizing connections between grades and units of study. This is why students see math education as a series of silos that they pass through: once they've see it, they won't need it anymore.

If your child is unhappy with their grade, the solution is simple: listen actively during instruction, take careful notes [I have purchased five notebooks for students so far this year] and ask questions in class; do the assigned homework in the week that it's due; come to Night Back with specific questions on the classwork; and prepare for tests and quizzes. My Night Back this week is Tuesday, 2:30 to 3:30.

Everyone is welcome here in A324, our Cluster One Math classroom.

Thank you for trusting me with the math education of your child.