Educational Digital Portfoilio

Describe one topic you feel you have mastered this semester.
One topic I feel I have mastered this year is the concept of logic and manipulation of conditional statements. This was our most recent unit in Geometry in preparation to create and visit an escape room. In this unit of Geometry, we took a lot of notes and used a lot of worksheets to demonstrate our learning. This is the way that helps me learn because I will always have something to reference when I need it, I think that is why I feel that I have mastered this topic.
You are able to clearly able to see this demonstrated in POW 8 and in the worksheets we have done in class. These assignments I am really proud of because they are accurate and also very referenceable. For once in Geometry I am someone that my peers as for help from, that is huge for me and so rewarding.  Not only do I feel that I have mastered this topic based on my grades but also by how easily I am able to complete the assignments I am given. This is huge for me because usually in math classes I am struggling to complete the work load and surviving on a less than stellar grade.

How have Explorations changed your experience as a math student this year?
Explorations have definitely changed my experience as a math student by making me think deeper and problem solve. I enjoy Explorations because they are an opportunity to dive deeper into the concept we are learning in class. At the point of an Exploration, we are usually able to comprehend the skill on our own and we are able to work alone or with a partner to gain skills and credit to benefit our grades. An example where I really thrived in an Exploration was Exploration 10/13. In this assignment there were questions about symmetry and about graphing. These were basic skills from Algebra 1 and even before that so I knew that I had mastered them. It always feels really good for me to understand concepts in math, therefore this exploration helped me learn.  However, while we were doing the unit on the Pythagorean Theorem I struggled a lot with Explorations, and Geometry in general. I asked for a lot of help from my friends, and in the end I didn’t end up benefitting from that process. Yet, as the semester progressed I was able to keep up with the material, giving me a slight bit of hope for moving forward in Geometry. The way that Explorations have helped me learn is through my failure in doing them and in doing them correctly. I knew that I would have to keep up with my class, so Explorations were a good way to have extra practice on that specific concept.

What is the hardest math problem you have encountered this semester? Explain how you solved it, or if you didn’t, why you weren’t able to.
The hardest math problem I have encountered this semester was the Extra Credit POW . I say this because I was not able to complete this POW. This POW was asking us to find the area of a triangle.  I was very frustrated because this was the last POW of the semester and it was on material we had already covered multiple times in class. I wanted to have those building blocks of my learning to base it off of and when I realized I had not learned anything that I was supposed to, it was very discouraging. I worked through this issue by completing the POW to the best of my ability and stood by my choice to turn it in showing my thought process and saving myself the stress that the POW would have caused. I tried my absolute best and despite my attempts of asking peers, drawing and trying to rationalize this POW online it was incomplete. Sometimes it is best to know when to quit and which assignments are worth the frustration, after all it was extra credit.

Which Habit of a Mathematician do you feel you have the most mastery over?
I feel that I have the most mastery over Communicating thinking in a clear and accessible way. This is because I am not very good at the actual numbers and equations of Geometry, however I am always able to translate it into a way that best suits me.  This may be in a way that does not even justify or provide a clear solution to the question, but it works and it is a start. You can observe my thought process very clearly in POW 8. In my process you can see my thought process because even though I may have found the solution I continued to look for other patterns regardless if the were right or not.
In addition, one of my strong suits is working in pairs and groups. I tend to be very unsure of myself in math and having others to bounce ideas off of really gets the ball rolling for class assignments and projects. I have used my peers as a resource a lot this year as a resource, and visa versa.  This can be demonstrated in the Pumpkin POW and also in our Polygon slideshow. In these assignments there was a lot of collaboration that is evident. For the Polygon slideshow we worked together by having a photographer and a writer. It worked out really well because we could go back and give each other feedback and talk about what needed to happen. In our Pumpkin POW I was able to do the short story while someone did the calculations and someone else did a description. In short, group work makes the work load lighter, I really enjoy collaboration, and that way I am able to express my opinion in a safe environment, regardless of if they’re wrong.

 For which Habit(s) do you feel you have the most room to stretch?
I have a lot of room to improve in the category of  Recognising and Resolving errors. I am aware of this because it is hard for me to recognise errors when it is really hard for me to even understand a problem in general. THis also ties into needing improvement in the category of  Generating idea specifically in the area of “Identify and apply appropriate mathematical tools (formulae, equations, diagrams, graphs)