Hi Mrs. Burke!
Thank you sooooo much for allowing us to gain 5 extra credit points for our final exam grade! I am eternally grateful since I just realized that I did make some goofball errors!
It has been quite a year! I had a lot of fun! I'm sure others did as well! There were several things that I thought were fascinating! These included:
~ Sets
~ The Pythagorean Theorem
~ The Pizzazz! worksheets with the jokes on them
~ Graphing equations on my calculator
~ Sending you messages on my calculator
~ The Distributive Property (especially my made up one for the exponents! :) )
~ Spreadsheet
~ Venn Diagrams
~ Factoring
~ Radicals
~ The Quadratic Formula
~ Chunking
~ Percents
~ Fitting a Line to Data
~ Listening to Sam's Michael McDonald Christmas CD :).
What I thought was interesting about the sets was the notation that one uses when intersecting or "unionizing" two sets. The Pythagorean Theorem was great because it enabled me to find the hypotenuse of a triangle. I think I can remember when my sister tried to teach it to me when we were waiting for our food at a restaurant (Levantes in Bethesda....they have great food!).
The pizzazz worksheets had jokes one them that one would find on a popsicle stick...enough said! Graphing on my calculator really helped me solve many problems. I really enjoyed sending you messages from my calculator because it's a new way to communicate, in a way! Obviously, I like my own distributive property for exponents! I'll do my best not to mention it to my high school math teachers! :)
What I thought was cool about the spreadsheets was that they could calculate equations just as fast as a calculator! The venn diagrams helped me find out problems with sets and intersections. Some problems that often came up were ones that were about some students taking a certain class, some another class, and some taking both (those were the annoying questions!). The factoring was great! It was fun trying out differents combinations that could go into the two paranthases that looked like this: ( )( ).
Simplyfing radicals was great as well because it gave me a chance to practice identifying perfect squares on the spot! The quadratic formula helped me solve a problem on the AHC placement test! I'm so glad I memorized it the day I learned it since it was on the placement test the day after! :)
Chunking definately helped me solve many different types of problems! The percents were interesting since it is so easy to turn a percent into a decimal or vice versa! Fitting a line to data was fun since it was different from all other kinds of math concepts because the fitted line doesn't always have to be PERFECT (in fact, it can't!), whereas math usually reaches perfection! :)
Obviously Micheal McDonald's Christmas songs were a smashing hit! ;)
All in all, this was a great year for math since my math skills were greatly improved! I must say, you were one of the best math teachers I have ever had! Thanks for everything!
It's so sad to leave this class! But I know that we will all do great in high school (especially in math since we learned so much this year!).
Again, thanks for EVERYTHING!
Love,
wiesej