An Exponential Review

We finished our review of exponents by playing Jeopardy!® with the Smart Board. Students seem to be well prepared for tomorrow's test.

Tonight's Homework: Study for tomorrow's test over scientific notation and exponents. The sections in the book are 4.6, 4.7 and 4.8

Exponents and Scientific Notation

We practiced computing with exponents in several different ways . Multiplying powers seems to be easier than dividing for most students, so we focussed on dividing.

Tonight's Homework: Do the front side only of Practice WS 4.8 C

Computing with Exponents Review

Today we reviewed how to multiply and divide with exponents, as the test over this information will be given in class on Friday. Students had over 20 minutes to begin tonight's homework, and many finished at least half of the problems.

Tonight's Homework: Complete both sides of the 4.6 C/4.7 C worksheet.

Exponent Experts At the Board

Today, we played At the Board, and reviewed how to write numbers in scientific and exponential forms. Students got progressively better at being able to come up with the correct answers, even though the problems got harder as we played longer.

Tonight's Homework: None, as long as you turned in everything assigned this week.

Scientific Notation

Numbers written using scientific notation have two distinct parts that are multiplied together:

First part--a number from 1 to 10, but not including 10 (1 ≤ n < 10 )
Second part--a power of 10

We practiced a writing a lot of numbers, both very small and very big, using scientific notation.

Tonight's Homework: Lesson 4.8 ( 11 - 31, 32 - 38 even, 47 )

Negative and Zero Exponents

Today we continued our study of exponents and looked at what happens when the exponents of powers are 0 or negative.

Two important rules were discovered: Anything to the zero power will be 1, and anything to a negative power can be thought of as the reciprocal raised to the positive power. (See page 200 and 201 for further explanation of these rules.)

Tonight's Homework: Lesson 4.7 ( 3 - 33, and 46 - 47 )

Welcome Back!

Students received weekly grade slips today. Please take care of any missing work as soon as possible, as it will definitely help your grade.

We talked about powers, bases, and exponents today. Most importantly, we learned shortcuts on how to multiply and divide powers with common bases. Be sure to read the lesson in the book prior to starting tonight's homework.

Tonight's Homework: Get your grade slip signed. Do Lesson 4.6 ( 3 - 43 )