I used to think that mental health meant how well you would feel mentally when you were experiencing severe emotions like depression, and I also thought that mental health affected your view on the world and it needed to be taken care of instead of being ignored. I assumed that mental health conditions were rare and that people who had them were severely troubled or had a lot of problems. Another assumption is that therapy was only for the mentally ill, or that mental health illnesses were a sign of weakness and flaw.
What I Think Now
But now I think that everybody could have the possibility of having mental health throughout their life and that it’s very common and nothing to be ashamed of. The possibility of having it increases during your teenage years because teens are more emotional as their amygdala (responsible for gut-level emotional responses, fear, and excitement) matures faster than their pre-frontal cortex (logical, rational thinking and control) also they experience more mood swings .
My perspective shifted on people who experience mental health from being afraid of them and judging them to understanding them. And I have a much clearer understanding on mental health like some of the different types such as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Depression, Anxiety, Eating Disorder, Bipolar Disorder. The takeaway of this is to care about others around me to prevent them from being affected by these mental health issues.
1. Evidence of Organization My science notebook is something I take a lot of notes in; it demonstrates my learning and growth, it became a bit messy as the year progressed.
3 learner skills that I have improved on is, one, responsibilty being more on time with my work and turning it in when the deadlines are due, this shows I’m responsible for my work. Another learner skill is being more focused
3. Evidence of Understanding of Key Concepts
I have a strong understanding of key concepts that I learned this term from the evidence I posted as I have gotten 3/3 for most of them.
4. Evidence of Growth in Science Skills Before:
After:
I have shown growth in making presentations that more effectively communicate the topic. In the models, I have more clear labeling and text that helps convey the idea better. My CERs are more concise with the correct information and wording in the claim, evidence and reasoning instead of sometimes adding reasoning to the evidence portion.
During the pickleball unit, we learned how to serve, recieve and rally with our opponents. I thought that in this unit I learned a lot about how pickleball works. Pickleball is similar to tennis, since you have a plastic ball and a paddle, and it uses similar boundary rules as badminton. We learned about the double bounce rule and what a kitchen is in pickleball. My prior knowledge of tennis and badminton allowed me to apply some techniques I learned from those to this. This wasn’t my favorite unit, but it was also my first time trying pickleball, and I thought it was kinda interesting. Overall, in this unit, I was able to learn to cooperate with my teammates in 2v2s, and I had a fun time rallying in 1v1s. But I didn’t like the physics of the ball and the way the paddles were heavier than a badminton racket, and hard to swing or smash. Let’s just say, I enjoyed this unit about as much as the Italians enjoy pineapple pizza.
For this semester, I exceeded in parts like using dynamics and articulation to be expressive when playing music, correctly holding my instrument, and using music vocabulary when talking or writing about music. My strengths are as a professional violin player, I have a good left hand and can play challenging pieces like Wieniawski Concerto No 2 3rd Movement. My right hand is flexible and this allows me to have a solid sound. My strengths also include having a good intonation and strong skill set in violin.
Some things that are beginning or approaching are that I’m not really organized so sometimes I forget to bring a pencil or my own music to class. Areas for growth are improving my rhythm as sometimes I rush a bit even when playing with the metronome, I should also try to improve my focus level. I often wander off when I practice long periods of time everyday around like 2-3 hours, this makes me really tired which doesn’t make my practice sessions effective.
For an action plan, from now to May, I’ll practice Vieuxtemps everyday for at least half of my practice session, familiarizing myself with the piece and refining every detail. I will strive to split it into parts to make it more manageable for me. Success for me looks like achieving a place in the professional competition in May/making my teacher proud, I also wish to continue to attend even more competetions.
This semester, I extended my learning by attending Juilliard Pre-College and this extends my learning in music because I’m applying what I learned in orchestra her to there. Next semester, I should try to extend my learning by applying for leadership postitions in Orchestra, as I should take school Orchestra more seriousl by applying myself and skills.
One strength I bring to math class is being responsible for submitting work on time and being on time to class. Another strength I have is the ability to collaborate well, I work with my peers excellently. A third strength I bring is being open minded when viewing or working on questions so I can find many methods of completing a question.
Area of Growth
One habit I want to improve this semester is being more organized with work and schedules. This is an area of growth for me because most of the time I either lose my work or forget to bring it to class. That tells me I’m not organized enough, I should keep folders so I don’t lose loose papers of work or keep a checklist that reminds me of what work I’m missing or need to bring to the school the next day.
Plan for Growth I will work on this habit by practicing to organize my work better. One specific action I will take is putting math papers in a folder so they get don’t crumpled at the bottom of my backpack. I should also write a schedule and a checklist so that it would help me even more to account for missing papers or work.
2. Math Notation and Communication
one photo of an early math notebook example.
one photo of a later math notebook example
Reflection:
My math work has improved because I’ve made my handwriting neater and had the information more focused so that its easier to read and I can easily access resources or key points when studying for a test. Over time, my notebook shows that it’s more organized and nicely kept, with a wiser use of space and the information and notes are more compact.
3. Evidence of Understanding of Key Concepts
Designing Your Story Problem
Pumpkin Project
Reflection (for each example):
In my Design Your Story Problem I understood how to find each interval of increase and decrease, slope of the equation in point slope form and slope intercept form, and the equation of each interval. I had neat work and was concise about what my data was about. I also explained the steepest part of the graph and what it means shows my clear understanding of this unit and topic. One strength in this work was that I also had a good model that I made to support the evidence it also helped convey what words could not.
For the Pumpkin Timebomb Project, I did well in graphing the scatter plot for the data and showed the correlation coefficient, regression model, and other evidence. My explanation included accurate mathematical terms and evidence. I also showed clearly which measurements affected the amount of rubber bands the pumpkin could take before exploding which was diameter and height. These two works shows growth over time as you can see how my explainations became better and helps the reader to fully understand the context of the problem and understand what I’m trying to express.
Final Reflection:
Overall, my work shows that I can fully understand all the key parts in the unit of linear functions. I am able to graph scatter plots and data using other models as well, my work isn’t as messy and it’s organized. My examples show growth in my ability to be organized and finish projects efficiently, effectively and excellently.
In this unit, I got to improve my badminton skills, my forehand serves are more easy to control and I can do small serves and also flick serves. My long clear is more accurate and I can hit all of them high above the net so that the opponent can’t attack directly. My attacking clear lasts longer when I rally with opponents, my overhead smashes still need work as I can’t do them on will, sometimes I manage to hit smashes other times I miss it. And I also need more power when smashing as my smashes are easy to intercept and return back. I should try attacking more as then my opponent would be caught off guard and protect so that I can take the advantage. I also need to work more on my dropshots as I still use a lot of force which makes them into a attacking clear, my hairpins are unstable and I should try to practice short balls so they land in front of the net as most of my shots go into the mid court or back court which sometimes makes them into out of bounds or faults. My backhand is pretty solid and my forehand has improved a lot. Overall, I really enjoyed this unit and want to do more of it to practice and refine my skills even more.
Part 1: Unit 2 Topic A and B Test Reflection (Functions & Statistics)
A. Evidence of Your Best Thinking
Select two questions from your Unit 2 test that best show your thinking.
I chose Question 2 from L3 Functions as evidence of my best thinking because in this question I used my knowledge on slope-intercept forms and how to calculate parallel/perpendicular/normal slopes. I calculated the answers correctly and corresponded the right equations to the right diagrams. This showed my understanding of the concept of functions and my constructive thinking.
I chose Question 5 from L3 Functions as evidence of my best thinking because I provided good reasons on things the character did well and one thing he could improve. After a careful thought process, I was able to accurately pinpoint what was right on the plot and which points were correctly placed and which ones weren’t so accurate, I used critical thinking to solve this.
B. Skills Reflection
Complete each sentence honestly and thoughtfully.
Throughout Unit 2, I improved the most at finishing my homework. I submitted all my homework on time with a high accuracy. The homework wasn’t really hard but I had a clear schedule and always knew when the homework was due so that my active learning grade would be good.
One skill from this unit that I still need to work on is making more quality work like the Piecewise Function Project and double checking. On most projects, I can get a solid meeting but I want to have higher expectations for myself so I can get a better score. Improving the quality would be like spending more time carefully reading the instructions, looking closely at the rubric, aiming for an exceeding etc. For double checking, I missed some questions on the test due to me thinking I finished them but I hadn’t, that made my score worse, so I should be less careless.
The biggest challenge for me on this assessment was the L4 part where you had to plot the line of best fit and its points onto an actual plot, I worked on it for a solid 20 minutes but the answer still didn’t seem right to me, so eventually I ran out of time.
One strategy that helped me on this test was focusing on the test and taking time to read each question carefully. This way I can fully understand each question and helped me answer more questions carefully with more thought out strategies.
Part 2: Goal Reflection & End-of-Semester Check-In
A. Looking Back at Your Last Goal
Last unit, you set this goal: ‘In the next unit, I want to be able to do all my homework on time and complete my work without procrastinating. ‘
How well did you work toward this goal? ☐ Very well ☐ Somewhat ☐ I struggled with this
What helped you make progress toward this goal? I made progress by writing down a schedule to remind me when things are due, this made me more organized. I managed to finish all or most homework in this unit, and had a high accuracy on the homework. I didn’t procrastinate as much, I always did it on the second day though.
What got in the way of this goal (if anything)?
B. End-of-Semester Self Reflection
List three strengths you have shown last semester: Perseverance, when I met a challenging question I try to do it to the best of my ability. Efficiency, I always try to complete assignments quick and productive. Open-minded, when I see a question I try to think of many ways to find the answer.
List three areas you still want to improve: Procrastination, I finish the homework on time but I want to try to achieve it on projects too. Responsibility, keeping a clear idea of what I need to review and being responsible for my grades and preparation for tests. Organization, organize my math homework and papers so it isn’t crumpled at the bottom of my backpack.
C. New Academic Goal Moving Forward In the next unit I want to complete projects with higher completion rates and aim for achieving exceedings. Something that might get in the way of this goal is me not having enough time to make a super high quality project as I’m a very busy person but I should try my best. If I get stuck or need help I will seek guidance from my teachers and ask what I can do to make this project better so I can achieve exceedings and better grades.
1. Describe your story and what real-life situation it modeled? Our story is about a city’s bike share program, it models the cost over time as the person continues to use the bike. In real life Shanghai, we can often see yellow or blue bikes on the streets for rental and those make traveling from one place to another a lot easier, because they have a much lower price compared to taxis or Ubers. We wanted to use this because we thought it would make an interesting story and there’d be a lot of questions we could think of.
2. What part of your project are you most proud of? Why? I think I’m most of proud of the explanation part, I wrote a clear explanation with few errors, I also clearly showed the function notations. I’m also proud of the graph I drew because it helped me to explain this question better.
3. What was the hardest part of creating your piecewise function? I think the hardest part of creating my piecewise function was finding a solid story and a good question to use. We brainstormed several ideas, and I think that’s the part we took the most time on. Another hard part was not getting the data wrong, I had to redrew the graph 3 times because we kept on chnaging ideas for the pricing for it to make the most sense.
4. If you could revise one part of this project, what would you improve and how? If I was to revise one part of this project I would change the questions and slightly fix the story a bit. As the story we used at the end was good but there were a couple loopholes and some parts that didn’t entirely make sense.
5. What did this project help you understand better about piecewise functions? This project helped me understand that piecewise functions are made up of different rules that apply to different intervals of the input. Instead of one formula working for all values, each piece describes a specific situation or condition. It also helped me review these new points and helped my learning.
Audience Insight: What key message do you want your audience to understand about you as they view your artwork? How did you communicate this message?
I want the audience to understand my interests and possibly personality. In this painting I used elements such as collages, color choice, spray paint and digital art. The collages show objects that mean different things, the headphones show my love for music, music connects to my interest in violin, and it has been a major part of my life since I was young. Another example, the seal plushie with the two stars on it’s head was a way of demonstrating my creativity, this seal is in fact an oc of mine and it shows silliness and seems to radiate positivity. The video game controller shows how gaming is also one of my interests. I used colors like yellow orange and red for the spray painting background, this demonstrates my personality and gives a rather warm feeling to the artwork that contrasts the blue color of my persona.
Risk and Experimentation: During the creation of your artwork, how did you take risks and experiment in order to effectively express your intended message?
During the creation of my artwork, I was experimenting when I was spray painting my canva’s background, as I didn’t know which colors to choose so I chose some bold colors and decided to try layering them. This later on effectively expressed my intended message of diversity as each color on my piece demonstrates a different meaning. I also experimented with collages and using different parts of newspapers for intended colors. I also took a risk when I decided to use contrasting colors for my spray paint background and the digital painting, because I didn’t know if it would look good, but it turned out really well and it brought out the details like the collages more and the digital painting stands out.
