Interviews

Grade 8's,
It was nice meeting with many of you and your parents over the last two days. I enjoyed talking about your accomplishments so far this year, and our plans to continue to get you ready for highschool. There were a few things that came up in several of the interviews that I want to address with you.
1 - Many of you still do not have a combination lock on your locker. I would like to make sure that you have one on it ASAP (for sure by January at the latest). I understand that some of you are taking all your books home each night as well. While I can appreciate that you may want to use them to review and study, and I know I've told you not to keep anything in your desks, I hope that you are able to keep the books that you won't be using at night in the top of your locker. Hopefully, this will make things a little easier on your back in the long run!

2 - Several parents were asking for more homework. I talked with many of them about the blog and that you are expected to check the blog each day and record answers to various problems that I post on it. Some of you are already GREAT at this, and some of you need to remember to post your name on the work so you can get credit for it. Others of you need to submit answers on a more consistent basis.
In addition, I will try and post some sites that you can visit to practice skills that you should have as part of your knowledge by the end of grade eight. (One thing that I have noticed after teaching grade eights for six or seven years is that some students tend to forget what they've learned as soon as we move on to a new topic - e.g. while we are working on algebra, it is still important to remember the formula for perimeter of a rectangle is twice the length and the width).