Thank you for a great year

Hello everyone,
Thank you for a super fabulous year.  Here is a link to our end of year picture video.  I had a great time being your teacher and getting to know all of you (parents included).  You worked hard and learned a lot, not just about math, but about each other and about our school.  You guys rock!  I am going to miss you and I hope you all come by and see me when you're 7th graders.  If you want to keep your math skills up over the summer check out this link.
Happy Summer Vacation!
Love, Mrs. Bird

The Algebra Tile

Parents (or students who are not quite sure what is up with the algebra tiles), I made a video that explains what each algebra tile represents and how to calculate perimeter and area of algebra tiles.  I hope this video will help you better understand what we are doing with the tiles in class. The video is located on the Math 6 Honors webpage under the VIDEO tutorials heading.

Opportunity for 6th through 8th grade girls

Simpson University is hosting a STEM conference on Saturday March 12 from 8am-2pm.  I will be attending.  Click the link here to register
Click the link here for the informational flyer
Registration deadline is February 24.

Areas, areas and more areas

This week we focused on finding the area of "L's" that is when two rectangles are connected.  We also learned how to find the area of parallelograms, triangles and trapezoids.  Check out the video tutorials I posted for trapezoids and triangles if you would like a refresher, or for parents, you can see how we have learned how to find the area of these shapes.
We have a test on Thursday.  It will mostly be review of previous chapters, but the new stuff on it will be to find the area of a triangle, the area of a parallelogram and the area of an "L" shape as well as to multiply two fractions.  Watching any of the tutorial videos from this webpage or going over the chapter 5 closure problems will be the best way to prepare for this test.

Regan figures out how to find the area of a trapezoid

These girls are busy cutting out trapezoids to see how they can be
rearranged into shapes that are parallelograms or rectangles
and triangles.

Cutting trapezoids so we can find their area.

Chase works several ideas in order to chop up his trapezoids.

Welcome Back!

I hope everyone had a wonderful time reconnecting with family and friends during the two weeks off together.  I had a wonderful time with my three boys.

This first week back we explored multiplying mixed fractions and why it is best to change them to "improper fractions" before multiplying them. (An improper fraction is a fraction with just a numerator a denominator.) We will continue to look at this and practice this week.  Check out the following videos to see how we are working these problems out in class.

Generic Rectangle
Change to improper fraction