Castillero Middle Weekly Review (1/11/24)

STEM for Others Update at Castillero       

        Hi Cobras! Today was the first day back since the winter break. I saw a lot of familiar faces, but also several new ones whose names I hope to learn in the future. There was definitely more people than usual. Whether this was because people spontaneously rediscovered their love for math, or because they saw their grades from the first semester, we may never know. The library was bustling with activity and a lot of students had questions which I helped them with.

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        For the 6th graders, they were learning about variables and solving equations for "x". While some were able to grasp the concept fairly quickly, others struggled when the variable was in the denominator. They would try to multiply both sides by the numerator, but it failed because the x would still be in the denominator and nothing would be canceled out. I helped them by hinting to cancel out the denominator by multiplying both sides by x. After this, many more students were able to move on quickly and solve the problems.

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        For the 8th graders, they were learning about radicals. They had to estimate radicals that didn't come up with a perfectly whole number. For these problems, it is important to have a strong foundation on the multiplication tables and the perfect squares. For example, square root of 160 may seem impossible to find without a calculator, but if you know that the square root of 144 is 12 and the square root of 169 is 13, you would know the answer is between 12 and 13.

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       Overall, it was a very successful visit and I am glad to see so many faces. Happy New Year and GO COBRAS!