I used to think that people with mental health were “unstable” or could be dangerous. I felt like mental health meant people that had some problems with how they act, what they felt, things like that. For example, for depression, I thought it meant people would just not be in the mood to do anything at anytime, and that would cause them to just sit on their bed or their couch everyday and think. I think my thinking stemmed from a lot of movies that stigmatized these types of mental disorder.
My current learning
I think now, I’ve learned that people with mental health are still people, and even though their daily lives might be different from ours, there are still a lot of treatments for these people. I also never knew that there was so many different types of mental disorders. For example, for eating disorder, I learned that there were three different types of eating disorder: Binge eating, anorexia, and bulimia. I feel like my perspective on those who have mental health has drastically shifted, because now I feel more sympathy for those people, and I feel like there are more ways that we could help them, instead of just being scared of them and thinking they are “dangerous”.
A strength I think I have in math class is finishing all my homework on time and to the best extent that I can. I think my notebook is pretty neat and it can successfully showcase my work.
Another strength that I have is being able to participate in class to my full extent, as well as being able to work with basically anyone in the class, and to finish whatever problems that the teacher assigns to us.
The third strength I have is being able to use the concepts I managed to learn in many different ways and to integrate the equations that I learned into the tests and the problems that the teacher gives us during exercises and quizzes.
Area for Growth
One habit I want to improve on for this semester is asking more questions if I don’t understand a concept. I think this is an area of growth for me because some of the concepts I don’t grasp in class, and I usually just go home and self-learn it if I don’t really understand these concepts, but I think sometimes I would have to basically “Relearn” the subjects. I think if I started asking questions, it would make my life easier and help me understand the concepts better.
Plan for Growth
I will work on this habit by asking my tablemates if I don’t understand a concept, and doing more practice problems at home. If I still don’t understand the problem still, I could send a message to my teacher, or find her during the break times to ask her to explain the concept better to me.
My math work has improved because I have noticed that my homework is much neater than it was at the start of the semester, and I have put a lot more effort into my work. Over time, my math notebook shows neater work, more highlights and more emphasis on equations and other important notations and math work. My math organization has also improved because I think outside of just that one day, and I make sure that all my notes is from the same day, and my homework is recognizable as homework and not pieces of just random writing.
Evidence and Understanding of Key Concepts
This example is from my piecewise project that I completed with one of my classmates. This shows my understanding of the concepts because I used both equations (slope intercept and point slope) to figure out the equations for the different intervals of increase and decrease. One strength in this work is it shows each step of the work that I did to get me to this answer, and after doing this across all of the intervals, this shows that I am able to understand this concept. This work shows growth because it shows how much I learned since the start of the unit.
This example is from a Mid-unit quiz on statistics. This demonstrated my learning beacuse I was able to integrate everything we learned, including the writing format using the word “predicted”, to write what I thought the y-interest, correlation coefficient, etc meant.
Overall, my work shows that after being able to grasp the concepts, I am able to use it in a lot of different ways especially with classmates during project.
Our story was modeled after both mine and my friend’s interests, and we changed the names so it wouldn’t have any copyright, however we tailored it to be able to connect to our favorite characters’ interests and their hobbies.
I’m most proud of the part where we had to solve every part of our graph using function notation, because I think that was the part where we had to work on the most and had to use the most scrap paper for, especially because of the equations and the math involved in it. I think through our work, we managed to get all of the equations correct using both function notations.
The hardest part of creating our piecewise function was probably the explanations, because we had to actually use our knowledge of the subject and our critical thinking skills to be able to solve these questions.
Something I would change if I could revise this project is making sure our variables were correct. As the comments said, sometimes we used x, sometimes we used t, so a better consistency would be better.
This project helped me understand how piecewise functions are used in everyday life, and how we can use piecewise functions to make our lives much easier.
Our second unit was to create a VEX IQ robot, following the instructions on the internet. I didn’t have any prior experience, but I was lucky enough to be paired with two partners who did have prior experience, which made the overall experience and process a lot more easier and enjoyable. We were pretty effecient in creating the car, and had an unfortunately failed first attempt, however after some changing of the wheels and retesting, we managed to have a successful car.
Afterwards, we had two tests, but due to the fact that we had to make a lot of really fast changes, both of these tests failed. Our code unfortuantely failed, and our final test was a fail.
As you can see here, we had to go through an entire process for our design journal to work, including talking about what our client needed, some examples we could use, our original planning designs, our successes and failures, and the eventual finished product. I originally had 3 design ideas, however I decided to choose the one on slide 7, because I felt like it had the most attention to detail and it was by far the one with the most color coordination.
During this process, we had to go through a bunch of different processes. First, we had to find similar products of the same art design as ours. Then, we had to make three design ideas from the ideas that we got online. Afterwards, we had to choose one and then start designing it on Inkscape, all the while recording what we were doing and keeping track of our progress. After inkscape, we started to cut them out, and then did a variety of spray painting, coloring, etc. depending on our design ideas. Finally, we had to glue everything together using wood glue, making sure the joints fit together.
Overall, I think I did pretty well, except I did not plan it out very well, and my joints turned out to not be aligned properly, so I wasted a lot of time on trying to reprint the joints and fit them together, which made me go overtime. I think I learned a lot about not just design skills, but also how to manage time well, how to collaborate and get feedback from my peers, and how to record and keep track of my progress.
This first table tennis unit was actually super fun. I think I did pretty good this year because I can totally tell I got better. My serves at the beginning were kinda weak, but now they’re way more effective.
The coolest thing I learned was how to put a spin on the ball. It makes this weird bounce that totally tricks the other person. I also worked a lot on my backhand serve because it used to feel so awkward. Now it feels way more natural and I can actually aim it.
I’m pretty happy with how much I improved in just one unit. It wasn’t easy, but practicing those skills definitely paid off. I can’t wait to play more and see if I can learn even fancier moves.
My current goal is participating in class and engaging in discussions with my peers. Some progress that I’ve made is working with my partners no matter who Im sitting with.
I am proud of having a deep understanding of the concepts, being able to understand what Ms. Neal is talking about, as well as being able to collaborate with my peers and working on the projects that I was assigned.
One of the biggest challenges in this class is staying focused and managing time, because I would talk to my friends after finishing my work, and I would be off-task.
Some qualities of Active Learner is preparing effectively and collaborating well, because I am always prepared when i walk into the classroom. I can improve on staying postive and participating fully.
In the swimming unit, I felt like I could’ve improved on active participation overall, for example touching the ball more and trying to play better defense. Something I think I improved on was swimming overall.
In the soccer unit, I felt like I was more active in the games, being able to defend some of the balls that the other team was trying to kick into our goal. I think that was also an area of improvement that I had. I think something I could improve on is when getting the ball, instead of directly passing to a teammate that might’ve been surrounded by the other team, I could’ve gotten the ball to an open space before passing to another teammate.
