To view individual course syllabi please use the following links:

Accelrerated Pre-Algebra	Data Analysis Lab
Algebra 1	Geometry Lab
Algebra 1 Honors	Pre-Algebra

 

February 2025

Dear Parent / Guardian:

Students entering seventh grade may take either Grade 7 – Pre-Algebra or Accelerated Pre-Algebra. All seventh graders also take a trimester course called Geometry Lab. Students who take Accelerated Pre-Algebra in grade 7 and Algebra 1 Honors in grade 8 complete three years of content in two years and are expected to demonstrate mastery of the content standards for Algebra 1 in addition to those for grades 7 and 8. Course descriptions are on the back of this letter.

To be considered for Accelerated Pre-Algebra, a student must participate in an assessment process. No advanced studying is required for this assessment. The assessment consists of a set of problems for students to solve. These problems are based on the content outlined in the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks in Mathematics. Students will be expected to solve these problems without assistance. The assessment will be completed online. Students will give a typed explanation of their process for the work associated with the open response problems as part of the assessment.

To participate in the assessment process, a parent must complete the registration form. Please read the form carefully and complete accurately. The registration form can also be found at www.masconomet.org. Navigate to Departments and then Mathematics and look under 7th Grade Placement.

Please refer to the table below for important dates related to the process.

Please contact me if you have any questions about the placement process.

I can be reached at: ssmith@masconomet.org

Sincerely yours,

Sarah Smith

Chairperson – Mathematics Department

Sarah Smith

 

Friday, March 21, 2025 Deadline to complete the registration form.

Friday, March 28, 2025 An email will be sent with directions to create an account to be able to take the assessment.

April 4, 2024-April 25, 2025 Window to complete the assessment.

Friday, May 9, 2025 Results and recommendation will be sent by mail on this date.

 

Middle School Course Offerings Grade 7

Grade 7 Pre-Algebra

This course offers a standards-based, integrated curriculum that incorporates topics described in the learning standards for students in Grade Seven found in the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks in Mathematics (©2017) The central content of this course focuses on: Ratios and Proportional Reasoning; The Number System; Expressions and Equations and Statistics and Probability. Students will analyze proportional relationships and apply them to problem solving situations. They will apply and extend previous understandings of operations with fractions to operations with rational numbers. Students will use the properties of operations to generate equivalent expressions and solve problems using numerical and algebraic expressions and equations. Students will extend their understanding of statistical measures using random sampling to draw inferences about a population and draw informal comparative inferences about two populations. They will investigate chance processes and develop, use, and evaluate probability models.

Accelerated Pre-Algebra

Accelerated Pre-Algebra is the first of two middle school math courses during which students will complete the seventh and eighth grade curricula as described in the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks in Mathematics (©2017) as well as the algebra1 curriculum described in the same document. To accomplish this, students study the content listed above for Grade 7 Pre-Algebra.

In addition, students study content included in the eighth-grade curriculum. Topics include:

● knowing that there are numbers that are not rational and approximate them as rational numbers;

● working with radicals and integer exponents;

● understanding the connections between proportional relationships, lines and linear equations

● analyzing and solving equations and inequalities in one variable

● investigating linear equations in two variables.

 

Since three years of content are covered in two academic years, the pace of this course will be significantly faster and the workload expectations are greater than for Grade Seven Pre-Algebra.