Baseball has been a lot of fun lately. We have been playing well and have only lost one game. It has been a lot of fun playing with the high schoolers, and it is a new, hard challenge. Playing sports for your school feels different than playing in a league because it represents you. I also think that it’s really cool that I get to play sports for high school as an 8th grader.
Boehm
Teach-In
Something that was surprising was that our activity was very successful even though it was inside. We didn’t think that it would go well because of the weather, but it turned out better than we expected. Overall, I feel that what we had a very successful time and I am proud of how our hard work turned out.
Basketball Game
Yesterday, we had a basketball game. In this game, the team we played, Dwight, wasn’t that great. What I learned from this game is that sometimes, it can be better to do something hard than to do something too easy. I think that this is a good thing for me to know because I think that it will mean that I will push myself more than I would otherwise.
Basketball Part 2.0
Yesterday at the LREI Knights basketball game, we lost. Though we lost, I thought that we played the best game of the year. This reminded me of a lesson. This lesson was that sometimes the best thing that happens to everyone isn’t always the greatest thing.
Math
In math lately, we have been doing a lot. We have been learning about radicals and scientific notation which I think is really cool because it seems to be a useful skill to have. I think that what I am doing in math is cool and I like how what we’re doing is to my speed and I am learning a lot of new things. I think that this keeps me engaged in math class because I am challenged enough. I think that this helps me call out less because I have more things that I need to focus on.
My Fun Break
Over break, I had a lot of fun. What I did over this break was ski. What I did while I was skiing was fun. The fun thing that I did whilst skiing was just regular skiing in Vermont, specifically a mountain called Stowe. Stowe is the name of the town in Vermont where I skied. Stowe is the name of the mountain that I skied at. In Stowe, I skied a lot of different runs, some were greens, some were blues and some were blacks, and by the way, some were double blacks. It was a very fun time in Vermont that I had, and then, I went to a little mountain called Catamount. At this mountain, I am an instructor. What I do is I instruct. I instruct people of all ages. One day, I taught someone how to ski, and I realized that since I taught him how to ski, that is an experience that can stay with him for the rest of his life.
Something That I Learned
Some aspect of learning that I had this week was over the weekend. I was upstate when I was learning how to be a ski instructor and we had to learn about how to make learning fun and engaging, as supposed to being the one taught in a fun and engaging way. It really helped me learn how hard it is to do that.
Comparisons & Unit Rates
https://app.letsrecap.com/public/r/0287cdd1cd67758b748832d90eb2df6a
I have found the concepts that we have been learning in math to be very helpful. From this information, I have gotten better at calculating percents, among many other things.
Here are 2 unit rates that can be found in one problem:
Ozs. 1 x
– –
$ y 5
Obviously, I cannot figure out both x and y in this problem, but if I know one of them I can. For example, if I went to the store and had one dollar to get ounces of cereal, how many I could get for $1. I would solve it by setting it up like this:
Ozs. 5 x
– –
$ 25 1
I would be able to figure out this problem. In order to do this, I would need to multiply 1 by 5, and then divide it by 25, so it would be 0.2. Now, I know that for every dollar, you can get .2 ozs of cereal.
Mathematical Similarity Summary
Figures are mathematically similar if they share a scale factor/ratio, and also they have to have congruent corresponding angles. This is true because if there is a triangle, and both have side lengths that are related by a scale factor but don’t have angles that are congruent, the figure is not similar. In order to acheive similarity, both of these reasons have to be true.
True or False…
Any two rectangles are similar.
This is false because both of these things aren’t true in this case. For example, if you had 2 rectangles, one with the dimensions 4x4x4x4 with 90° angles since it is a rectangle, and the second rectangle was 4x18293x4x18293, with 90° angles would not be related by a scale factor to the first rectangle.
Any two equilateral triangles are similar
This is true because all sides would be the same, as would the angles. If you had 10 equilateral triangles with different measurements, they would all be similar. 1x1x1, 1.5×1.5×1.5, 2x2x2, 2.5×2.5×2.5, 3x3x3, 3.5×3.5×3.5, 4x4x4, 4.5×4.5×4.5, 5x5x5, 5.5×5.5×5.5 are all related to each other. The ratios from the first one to the rest of them are 1:1.5, 1:2, 1:2.5, 1:3, 1:3.5, 1:4, 1:4.5, 1:5, 1:5.5, and they are therefore similar because all equilateral triangles have the same angles.
My Good (and Bad) Math Notes
In order for us to learn from our mistakes, we have to know the differences that show a mistake versus something that was done correctly. Above, you can see an example of bad notes. And below, there is a picture of my good note taking. The notes above are bad because my writing is too big, as it takes up more than one letter per space. It is also not very neat. The notes below are good notes because it is very neat, and it also each box has one letter in it.
