Name of Assignment: Written Assignment 3 Subject: Precalculus Facilitator/Teacher: Ms. Nelson
Description of Work/Assignment: For my math class one type of assignment that we have had is our written assignments. It usually consists of one main question with multiple parts. This particular assignment was about functions and applying them to real life scenarios. The questions were talking about having a business and how many products you need to sell to earn money. There were two questions with ten parts total. This assignment took me about 45 minutes to do, but it took a lot of effort figuring out how to set up the equations.
Which 21st Century Skill do you feel this assignment addresses, and why? This assignment took thinking and problem solving skills. Any time I am faced with word problems in math, I have to use this skill to solve it. You have to be able to take out the important parts of the statement and put it into an equation. It is like translating something to a different language. Then once you have the equation, you have to figure out how to solve it. It basically explains it in the name of the skill, you must first think and then solve the problem.
What are you most proud of from this assignment, and why? I am most proud of being bale to do this assignment completely on my own. I sometimes have trouble with word problems, so I usually have to ask for help on them. For this assignment though, I was able to figure out what to do and how to complete it on my own. I always go over my work when I am done to make sure I didn't make any mistakes, and I am also proud of how I got all of it correct on the first try.
How did you develop and/or improve upon your 21st Century Skill with this assignment? Usually when I do word problems I get help, but since I did this one on my own, I was really able to further my skills. I couldn't just pass over it, so I really had to put a lot of effort into it. I think the best way of getting better at something is by practice, and that is exactly what I did. Even though it was hard I didn't give up and just say I couldn't finish it. I was actually able to figure out a couple of ways to make word problems easier for future assignments.
What was most difficult about completing this task? The hardest this about this assignment was the beginning. Starting word problems is always the hardest part for me because I usually don't know where to start. Once I get going though, it gets a lot easier. Another hard thing was understanding what the problem was saying. Even though I may get what I have to solve, I don't always know what the question is telling me to do. Specifically for this assignment, I couldn't figure out what the constant was. Once I did that, the problem became a lot easier.
How could you improve this work? If you could start over, what would you do different? If I were to restart this assignment I would probably read over the question more carefully. I kind of did that for this assignment, but I would want to do it at the beginning. I just kind of jumped in because I wanted to finish it as quickly as I could. Instead, I would spend more time trying to understand it at the beginning, so I wouldn't keep on needing to go over the question at the end.
How does this relate to what you have learned in the past? This assignment was all about the unit that we just had in our class. It took multiple components from each section, and incorporated it into one question. I have also had previous math classes where we learned things that helped me to have a base for this math class. With math everything you learn kind of just builds up to something bigger. For any assignment that I have, it goes back to as far as first grade.
How can you apply this to future learning? The knowledge that I gained from this assignment will help me with my future math assignments and classes. Learning the basics of functions, plays a huge part in calculus, so now that I have this base, I can learn new and harder things. I can also use what I learned from this specific problem if I ever own a business. I will be able to figure out how many products I need to sell in order to make money.