Core Competency Reflection

Learning and using math vocabulary
This semester we learnt a whole new variety of mathematical vocab. As much as I disliked having to learn new vocab, once learned, it definitely helped as I could use specific vocabulary over saying, “the thing, the thing, the thing,”. For example, the radicand vs. the thing inside the square root bracket. Learning, but more importantly, understanding and being able to use this math vocab has greatly helped me on tests, and for overall understanding of the course.

Dealing with challenges
A pre-calculus 11 course has many challenges. One of the most obvious and arguably most difficult challenge, is not understanding the topic. To break this down, not understanding a specific problem. There are many ways I dealt with this challenge over the course of the semester, some strategies were better than others. The most obvious, and best strategy would be asking the teacher for help, that was my first choice. When that wasn’t an option I’d ask a peer. If I was away from the classroom, my first choice would be re-reading the notes, if that still failed I’d photomath the problem for a full solution. Another challenge was making silly mistakes on a test, I looked over my work but sometimes still missed stuff because I thought it was right. For example, I minused the coefficient when that’s not allowed, it should have been divided. I can’t say I found a solution for this, obviously the more you practice the less likely it is to make a mistake, but when studying I am not making these mistakes.

Working collaboratively with others
Throughout the semester we did groupwork almost every day. The prompt for this paragraph is “Working collaboratively with others,” The word collaboratively is a good word because it does not mean it was effective, and that’s how I feel. Group work is awesome in building skills, and a great way to learn the material, but this is only the case if you are with the correct group members based on your skills and level of understanding. At the start of the semester when group work was random it was good, most weeks you had at least one or two people in your group that were at your level. For me, group work was important, it really helped me learn the material, and was an important piece of my success. I just wish I could have been with stronger math students more at my level. I realize I could have switched groups, but halfway through the course when everyone already had good groups set, I did not feel comfortable leaving my group. I really liked my group members, but sometimes we were getting stuck on the simplest mistakes, and they wouldn’t like when I tried to help. Because of this, we were not an efficient or effective group. To summarize, I found group work very helpful, but would have liked my permanent group to be slightly stronger students.

Advice for Future Students

I have a few points of advice for future students. The first one, and what I think is the most important is do ALL the workbook questions, and do them right away. Some of the days have a lot of questions and if you wait, you will get overloaded and never do them. My second point is to slowly prepare for unit tests and quizzes at least a few days before the test. Doing this helped me do better on the test, and not be stress studying the night before when I’m not retaining knowledge as well as I would when I’m calm the days before the test. My last piece of advise would be learn the math vocab. Not only learn it, but be able to use it on a connecting and reflecting, or reasoning and modeling question. Using these words correctly is the key to getting extending on these types of questions.