Curriculum and Pacing

This unit covers material in chapters 1, 2, and 9 of the Math In Focus Textbook. Students will learn about positive and negative integers, fractions, and decimal numbers. They will work on comparing them and placing them on number lines. Negative number concepts include opposites, absolute value, and distances between values. We work with prime and composite numbers, prime factorization, factors, multiples, and GCF/LCM concepts. We also include squared and cubed numbers as well as order of operations. We finish this unit with an exploration of the four quadrants of the coordinate grid, placing points, reading coordinate pairs, reflecting points, creating shapes on the coordinate plane. Additionally, we use the coordinate plane for problem solving.

This unit covers material in chapters 7 and 8 of the Math in Focus Textbook. Students will be working on writing algebraic expressions and equations, then using those to solve or work on various types of problems, including real-world/word problems. Students will learn to evaluate, simplify, expand and factor expressions. They will also work with balancing equations, writing, graphing and solving linear equations, as well as writing and graphing with algebraic inequalities.

This unit focuses on division and multiplication of fractions and decimals. We focus on modeling the problems in order to create a deeper understanding of the "why" behind the answers. However, we do spend plenty of time working with traditional methods and algorithms as well. Students are expected to grasp fraction and decimal addition/subtraction prior to this unit and should know how to handle multi-digit multiplication using the traditional algorithm as well as knowing "long division."