Core Competency Reflection

Working collaboratively with others. This semester in pre-calculus, we did a lot of group work. I really enjoyed working with my group and I felt it helped me understand the math better. I thought it helped me because we all had different levels of understanding for each chapter. For example, a member of the group would have a good understanding of graphing linear equalities and explain it to the group members who didn’t understand the concept. This was helpful to me because when I didn’t understand something I could get it explained to me and different way then the teacher explained it. It was also helpful to explain the concepts to other group members. Explaining how to do the math helped me further my understanding. I think I did well communicating with my group when I didn’t understand or when I needed to help them understand. I also did well catching my group member’s mistakes and explaining what they did wrong. Overall, being in a group was very helpful to further my understanding of pre-calculus.

Managing time effectively. I felt that in the class, I kept focus on my work. I limited myself to distractions and really focused on finishing my work. This helped me finished all my work during class, so I didn’t have to do it after school. When I did get homework, I would try to do it right away in flex or CENT time. This helped me to not procrastinate and finish the work. When we had tests I would put aside time to study depending on my understanding of the chapter. I could also study in my first block after I finished my work, which I would do often. This was helpful because it kept my memory fresh as pre-calculus is my second block. I think time management helped me succeed in this course.

Committing to Individual practice. When I finished my workbook questions that were assigned I would often do extra questions to get extra understanding of the concept. I think this really helped push me over the edge of proficient to extending on most of my tests and quizzes. I would do this in class after I finished my work or in flex/CENT time when I had nothing to do. I think having extra time to do my work like flex or CENT time helped me in all my classes.

Advice for Future Students

My biggest piece of advice for students next year is to keep up with the workbook questions. Either if you missed a day or you didn’t finished in class it is important to not fall behind because this class goes fast. The chapters also build on each other, so keeping up is very important to understanding other chapters. I would also recommend doing the workbook questions as soon as they’re assigned to not procrastinate your work and fall behind. The work piles up and you will fall behind if you don’t do it right away. Learning the math vocabulary is also important. It may seem like you don’t need to know it, but it comes up on the test. It is an easy question if you take the time to know the vocabulary.