And So It Begins....

And what a beginning it has been! We got off to a GREAT start this year! I have such a wonderful group of kids, and I am DEFINITELY looking forward to a fantastic year working with you all!

The first week of the new school year was typical of weeks like this: getting to know the students, briefing them on the rules and procedures in class, issuing textbooks and materials, and getting into the initial lessons. You kids seem genuinely happy to be in my class, and I think you know by now how happy I am to have you with me! Keep working with me, and I PROMISE you, we will succeed, and you'll be off to high school!

As I write this post, I want to remind you of a few things. First, your composition notebook for my class is EXTREMELY vital. It's almost like your Bible in my class, children. You MUST have it for EVERY class from now on. In your comp book, you will keep all your warm-ups, all your notes for every lesson, and your journal entries. It's important that if you don't have your composition notebook, and you take your notes on another sheet of paper, that when you finally DO track down your notebook, that you transfer your notes over to the book, to keep them all together. This way, everything will be organized and at your fingertips when you need to remember what I taught you in class so you can finish your homework or study for your tests. The notebook is key, ladies and gentlemen! Don't lose it and don't forget to bring it to class!

This week, we began our study of simple probability, the calculation of the likelihood of an event happening or not. Probability can be expressed as a fraction, a decimal, or a percent. In my class, we will mostly give our answers as fractions, although you might see them on a test or two in one of the other forms, so we will continue to work on converting fractions to decimals and percents, etc. As the week ended, we began to work on tree diagrams, which is a way to visually list all of the outcomes for a given event. It's a lot of work, but if you do it right, you will always get the right answer. I also touched a little on the Fundamental Counting Principle, which we will study more in depth in the coming week. Speaking of next week, we will be finishing up simple probability, while doing a lot more work on tree diagrams, the Fundamental Counting Principle, and compound independent event probability problems. Trust me, it only SOUNDS difficult. Once I show you what to do, you'll find that it's not difficult at all.

With that, I will now close this post and go get ready to celebrate! After all, today is MY BIRTHDAY! It's such a blessing to see 45 years (and NO, that is NOT old, LOL). Besides, when you teach such great kids, like I do, you can't help but feel YOUNG (and I feel about 25 right now, lol). Have a great weekend, everybody! See ya in the Red Hallway, Knights! 801, SECOND TO NONE!!!