Hello parents and families!
My name is Miss Corwine and I am the “new” 6th grade math teacher. I have been part of the Palouse Prairie Community all year as one of two Americorps volunteers. I have a background in Science Education and Environmental Health research and a true love for all things math (and especially statistics) related. I have lots of energy and math strategies to share with your student and I am excited to share with you what we’ve been up to.
When we returned to school in the New Year, we began a unit in Shapes and Designs. We learned how to estimate angles using our landmark angles and how to think about interior, exterior angle measurement and how different shapes fit together. We stretched our thinking to begin algebraic reasoning using basic geometry equations.
This week, we started a new unit in statistics. We are talking about data distributions and learning to think about data in terms of ranges, medians and modes. We’ll be deciding as a crew what types of data are interesting to us and put our new mathematical tools to use to describe our own data sets.
We have also started using a program called Apangea to supplement our in class curriculum here. One to two times a week, students will be working on a customized pathways of math lessons that is designed to help them practice basic math skills as well as introduce new math concepts. This program is a great complement to our in class curriculum.
Many of us are experiencing new challenges in math: Some of us love the spatial reasoning we used in the Shapes and Designs unit, while some of us are enjoying how we can use data to describe our worlds. In our Data About Us unit. Most of us are not used to having homework four nights of the week, and we are working to figure out how to stay on top of our workload.
Please contact me with any questions you have about 6th grade math. I’m happy to help support your student’s mathematical development in any way that I can.
Sincerely,
Miss Corwine
