Option 2 – Critical Thinking

Profile 3 – I can ask questions and consider options. I can use my observations, experience, and imagination to draw conclusions and make judgments.
I can ask open-ended questions, explore, and gather information. I experiment purposefully to develop options. I can contribute to and use criteria. I use observation, experience, and imagination to draw conclusions, make judgments, and ask new questions. I can describe my thinking and how it is changing. I can establish goals individually and with others. I can connect my learning with my experiences, efforts, and goals. I give and receive constructive feedback.

I think that this shows my level of critical thinking well. I have shown that I can describe my thinking during our discussion postings. I have responded to other’s postings, which necessitates that I explain my thinking clearly in ways that other people understand.

I especially demonstrated critical thinking during the logarithms test by thinking about logarithms in different ways. (I applied my prior knowledge of exponents to this new function to help understand logs). I also had to use my knowledge of previous word problems to help me solve word problems in each of the new units, as it’s much easier if you apply prior skills and strategies to do something, than just doing it for the first time.

I think a major part of critical thinking being able to break down problems and identify the different parts so that you can address part well. This is effective as small problems are easier to solve than large ones.

Something for me to work on would be my personal responsibility. I do not have consistent or very good study habits. I also tend to procrastinate on things sometimes. I am acutely aware of these problems I have directly after I have done them, but that I forget about (and forget how much I dislike doing them) while I am doing them and trying to do homework. It not only can impact my grades and learning, but it can eat away at time spent on productive and meaningful endeavors. I have to find ways to break this problem down into little bits using my self-proclaimed critical thinking.