Tag Archives: #ThinkingCC

Pre-Calculus 11 Core Competency Self-Assessment

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Core Competency Reflection

Working collaboratively with others

Throughout the course we were required to work with others almost daily. Whenever we were taught a new lesson, we would break off into groups to do group work questions. Through this, I was able to successfully complete the assigned questions with my group. Anytime any of us were stuck on a question, someone else would step in to help solve it. We would work together and explain our thought processes so we could figure out how to answer the question. Furthermore, after the group work was done and we would move on to homework questions, I would collaborate with the people at my table anytime one of us needed assistance in solving one of the questions. I would work together with my peers to help them understand a question or vice versa.

Strategically preparing for assessments

I had a prepared study plan for every assessment, which always began with inputting the date of a test into my calendar so I wouldn’t forget. To prepare for assessments, I always made sure that I finished all the assigned workbook questions, reviewed notes and asked for clarification from my peers to ensure that I understood all of the content. Furthermore, I found that the ability to explain concepts would help with my understanding, so I would often review each concept by explaining them out loud, as though I were teaching it to someone. Although this may seem like overkill, it greatly helped me prepare for each assessment, as I always went into the tests feeling confident and prepared. My efforts came to fruition, as I often got high marks on my tests.

Dealing with challenges

I faced many challenges throughout the course as we covered new topics. Specifically, trigonometry was the most difficult unit for me, as I missed an important lesson and began the unit with no memory of anything learned in Math 10. I also found the concepts difficult to grasp and confusing at times. To deal with this challenge, I looked through the notes of the lesson that I missed, and when I was still confused, I watched a YouTube tutorial on the topic that explained everything in detail. This greatly helped when doing the homework questions, as I now understood the concepts taught and could easily complete them. As of writing this, I have not yet written the test for the Trigonometry unit, but I’m confident that I’ll be able to do well with some review.

Advice for Future Students

My advice for future students would be to do the workbook questions. The amount assigned is almost always enough to finish in class time and it is good practice for tests. The questions on tests are usually the same as what is assigned in the workbook, so it will help greatly when writing them.

Facing a Challenge

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The first time I tried this problem, I found it challenging because of the sheer amount of steps that were involved in the problem. While working through it, I made sure to work slowly to avoid any possible mistakes that could occur.

However, while I was simplifying terms, I accidentally forgot to subtract x from the left side, giving me 2x – 3 = 4√x + 2 instead of x – 3 = 4√x + 2. This resulted in me struggling when it came to factoring the trinomial, as I had incorrect values that I was trying to find factors for.

Eventually, I figured out what I had done wrong after a classmate let me know that something was wrong with the equation. I looked through every step I had done up to that point and discovered my error of forgetting to subtract x. Once I had made the appropriate changes, I was able to go through the rest of the steps easily and solve the equation.

To be able to solve this problem, I needed to use skills that we had been practicing all throughout unit one. The overall problem was solving for x and determining any restrictions or extraneous solutions. I had to isolate one radical on one side while using FOIL on the other side of the equation. The problem also involved simplifying terms and factoring trinomials, which I did by using the Zero Product Property. To determine the extraneous solutions, I simply plugged in the answers I had gotten for x into the equation to see whether they were correct, which -1 was not. To determine restrictions, I took the radicands, turned them into inequality equations and solved for x. As -3/2 was a greater number than -2, it was used as the restriction because any number greater than -3/2 will automatically be greater than -2.

Next time I encounter a difficult equation, I might try looking over previous steps before moving on to the next step to ensure that I haven’t made any errors along the way.

English 10 Core Competency Self-Assessment

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Creative Thinking

Creative Thinking

I demonstrated creative thinking through the poetry unit project we did in my English 10 Creative Writing class. When creating my artifact, I brainstormed the different ways that I or those around me have experienced love in different ways. I took different experiences I’ve had to generate the lines of the poems. I also took inspiration from different forms of media that I’ve consumed over the year that involved love and romance to paint a picture as to what love could be like from a variety of perspectives. A strategy I found when trying to write this poem was to just write “badly”. I would disregard any grammar rules and just let my mind run wild as I wrote down everything that would come to mind, no matter how bad it was. Once I decided that I had enough written down, I would go back and edit what I had written and try to fit it into lines of poetry that made sense and seemed cohesive. This poem was written in free verse, meaning it had no rhyme scheme or general pattern, so to improve for next time, I would like to branch out and try to write poems using more rhyme schemes or writing a wider variety of poems.