February


 * Chapter 12 went quickly. There are only a few points to cover before the test. We did use the graphing calculator quite a bit through this chapter to get the students comfortable with square roots and cube roots.
 * The students were weak on their perfect squares. I left a list of the perfect squares on my board until the test day. I was surprised at how many students had to look at the board to find a perfect square factor.
 * The first test of this month was the chapter 12 test. It was on the operations with radicals. The students did very well on this test. They did need a lot of reinforcement on rationalizing the denominator though. They were not sure when they needed to.
 * We began chapter 13. We are currently working with solving quadratic equations both algebraically and graphically. The students that remembered how to factor from chapter 11 are doing well. However, those who had difficultly factoring are not doing as well. I have been reminding students of the necessity to comprehending factoring since they will continue to see it for the rest of the year.
 * The chapter 13 quiz went very well. I had excellent results. Students that needed help factoring came in to get that help. Students are still forgetting that they should look for a GCF first, then look to DOPS and trinomials. I think this is a great setup for the rest of the chapter.