Option 1 – Collaboration

My group and I worked very well together this semester. We all contributed, even in small ways, to every problem we worked on and weren’t afraid to challenge each others answers or ask questions. We didn’t have definite roles in my work group, but I often took up the “scribe” role and wrote out the questions. Even then, we usually had a system where if the person writing didn’t know how to solve the problem or needed clarification on something, another would take the marker and talk through the answer. Often our whiteboard is filled with all three of ours’s writing. We work very well as a group.

The picture above is from the in class work questions from the polynomial unit for section 3.2, though this unit is more simple than others we had some difficulty with question 1. This was our first time working with a graph like this and we were all confused about what to put where and how to set up the basic shape of it. We combatted this by checking the notes and learned how to find the degrees of the x-intercepts and the graphs end behaviors. We ran into another problem when calculating points to plot, we got very large numbers that seemed unrealistic. With Ms. Eaton’s help we found that the numbers did make sense in the equation after using “Desmos” and seeing what the graph looked like. We solved this problem and many others utilizing all the resources we have been provided with.

I think my group’s problem solving skills could be improved in a couple of ways according to the Core Competency collaboration profiles. First off, I think our work and roles could be divided up a bit more equally according to profile 2. This includes not relying on a certain very much smarter member to do a lot of the work and have everyone try their best to solve the question without fear of getting it wrong. We can work together to get it right. Another way to improve our collaboration would be to talk to a few other groups if we are really stuck, according to prompts 4 and 6. Instead of looking at what the other groups are doing to solve harder problems, we should talk to them and ask them about their solving process. We do this already but I think we could do this even more and talk to even more groups than just a certain few.