Dear Parents and Students,
My name is Stephanie Browning and I look forward to teaching your student 9th grade Math this school year.
I moved to Georgia almost 2 years ago from Mississippi. I am a graduate of University of Mississippi with a Masters degree in Education. I am married and have 2 children who attend Stone Creek Elemetary. This will be my 15th year to teach. I have spent half of my career teaching Middle School and the other half teaching High School. I must say High School is my “love”.
Please review all the policies and procedures in the packet with your student, fill out Parent Form, sign and return to me.
This year your student will be taking the new Common Core Coordinate Algebra course. High School Math generally proves to be more challenging than years before. To excel this school year in Mathematics your child will need to practice and study at home OFTEN.
Email Stephaniebrowning@walkerschools.org with any questions or concerns.
Thanks for your support,
Policies and Procedures
1. Enter the classroom with supplies ready to work.
2. Immediately take your seat, place your homework on your desk and start your Warm Up activity. (As students are working on the Warm Up activity the teacher will check roll and homework. Students will have 5 min to work on the Warm up. After this time I will call out answers to the Warm up and homework and discuss any problems that students have question about. Students should check their warm up and homework and correct any missed problems. They should not only have the correct answers in for these problems but the correct way to work them out.
3. Stay on task and do your best. Don’t give up. (After warm up there will be a mini lesson then a challenge problem for them to exoplore. These problems are designed to bring out prior knowledge and discover gaps in learning. They are meant to “challenge” the students. Any challenge requires a struggle.
4. Participate in class discussion- after students have explored the task we will discuss what they have discovered. Students should be ready to present any information discussed during their explorations.
5. Be honest with your group- students need to take ownership of what they need to learn. They must be willing to tell their classmates and myself what they are struggling with and ask questions. Sometimes it is hard for students to learn how to formulate their questions but it is a crucial for them to learn to be specific about their misunderstandings. “I don’t get it” doesn’t give us anything to go on. More appropriate comments may be “I get lost in step #?”, “I don’t understand why this is diffenent from ________ “ , “I understand _____________ then I get confused”.
6. Do not “pack up”. At the end of the period there will be a closing activity. Students often watch the clock and begin packing up and miss very important information.
Grades
1. Warm Ups will be collected weekly for a daily grade. The Warm
Up will be discussed daily so there is no reason to get less than 100 for this daily grade.
2. Homework will be checked for completion at the beginning of each class period. No credit will be given for just answers your must show your work, explain your reasoning or draw a diagram to illustrate you solution. Homework grades are;
0- less than half of the assigned problems or no work shown
50- at least half of the problems attempted with work shown
100- All problems attempted with work shown