8 th Grade Math

Ms. Shana Norton

E-mail: slnorton@seattleschools.org
Phone: 206-252-9000
When available: 3rd period 9:38-1030 am, after school 2:45-3:30 pm

I am a graduate of Antioch University downtown Seattle. I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Liberal Studies along with a teaching certificate. This is my eighth year with the Seattle School District. I was an Instructional Assistant in special education for six years at Hamilton International Middle School and this is now my second year teaching mathematics at Denny Middle School.

I made my way out to the west coast in 1996 from my home state of North Dakota. My family still lives there so I try to get back every now and then. Some of the activities I enjoy doing are: scrapbooking, scuba diving, traveling, hiking, boating, wakeboarding, crafts, and spending time with my 5 and 8 year old siblings.

Standards Taught in Class (EALR)
It includes but not limited to these five areas of the EALR: Number Sense, Algebra, Geometric Sense, Measurement, and Probability and Statistics. Other standards are that students
will be able to understand and apply concepts and procedures, define and solve problems, use mathematical language to communicate and reason, and to integrate
mathematics with daily life and other subject areas.

Course Description

The district directed curriculum is based on Connected Mathematics Program (CMP) which has all the components of Essential Academics Learning Requirements in Mathematics. There are six plus units. To name a few: Accentuate the Negative, Filling &Wrapping, Moving Straight Ahead, Looking for Pythagoras, and Thinking With Mathematics Models. These books are all EALER base.
Further details are in the syllabus.

Expected Outcomes
In addition to the goal listed by the National Council of Teacher (NCTM), all students will be able count, visualize, compare, estimate, measure, model, reason, play, and use tools. Students will value that the process of arriving at an answer is equally important as the solution derived e.g. WASL.

Materials used/required
Generally speaking, the manipulative resources are unit cubes, meter sticks, rulers, Cartesian Grid, grid papers, scissors, graphic calculators, the school building itself, and supplementary items such as Problem of The Week and Warm-up exercise.

Students are expected to bring the following items to class:
Denny Planner (used to help students monitor their homework and projects)
3-ring binder with college-ruled three-holed punch paper
Composition notebook (provided for $1)
Supply of pencils and erasers
Ruler
CMP II textbook (provided)
Calculator (with negative/positive, exponent keys)
Graph paper

Assessments used
There are several areas of assessment. Each area of assessment counts as a percentage of the student’s overall grade.

Participation (including warm-up) 20%
At Home Assignments 25%
Quiz/Tests 50%
Attendance 5%

Grading Scale

100 – 90 = A
89 – 80 = B
79 – 70 = C
69 – 60 = D
59 – Below = E

At Home Assignments
Learning to be done at home will be assigned throughout the week, almost every day, including Fridays. There will on occasion be days where there will be no assignments for home due to a field trip or assembly. Home learning is due the day after it is assigned.

Late Work
Generally, late assignments are discouraged and not accepted. However, if a student conferences with me, exceptions can be made.

Absences
When there is an absence, it is the student’s responsibility to check the homework board for missed work and ask me questions if clarification is needed. The student then has two days to turn in make-up work. If the absence is more than a couple days the student and I will conference for an appropriate due date.