Getting fluent in math terms
Math
In the 7th grade, I have gotten comfortable at using math terms, and understand them better. The purpose of this reflection is to show my growth in becoming fluent at using negative and positive numbers, and to show some of the things we do in math that we did that show the growth. By fluency, I mean that I can easily multiply, divide, subtract, and add the negative and positive numbers. There are a lot to choose from, but these are the ones that I learned the most in. The book thoroughly asked us to explain our work, so that we can see the reasoning behind the math. This reflection is for me to reflect upon my work, so that I can showcase what things I did in math this year.
The first artifact that I am going to share is the notebook in which we did the Accentuate the Negative unit. We solved some problems that the book gave us. The book gave us math problems, but also asked us to explain our answer. That helped us because it made us realize what the problem meant, and that we knew how to find the answer and know why the solution is that way. We did the problems every day in class, and we could choose to work with our peers. We used calculators sometimes and wrote our answers down in the notebook. A concept from the book is inequalities, where we took two numbers, and saw if one number is greater than, less than, equal to, greater than or equal to, or less than equal to the other number. We then could graph it on a number line by having a line go left if it was less than and right if it was greater than. Another tool that I learned from the book was the number line, on which we could locate negative and positive numbers, and see how far apart they are. You can use it to locate two numbers, then find the difference between them, which is how much you go left or right from the number to get to the other number. It also was used to locate inequalities. The significance of this notebook is that it helps me to understand the concepts, as the notebook asks me to explain all my solutions. I really benefited from having to realize what I was doing to find the answer. At first it took me a long time, but after practice I became fluent.
Another artifact I am going to share is the Focus Questions (FQ) or the Accentuate the Negative unit. The purpose of the FQ was that we revisit the FQ after the investigation. It saw if we understood the main idea the investigation was trying to tell to us. It did that by asking us a FQ every Investigation, and the teacher told us to take notes while we were discussing the FQ Answer in class. We always took some notes that would later on help us to study. A concept I learned was the love and hate skill. It is an easy concept you can use to find the sign of your product or quotient. You have to refer to negative as bad and positive as good. Then, if the problem is (-1) * 1, the scenario becomes “you hate to love”, which is bad, hence it is a negative product. You can multiply the two together and add a negative sign to it. The FQ really helped me because I could revisit them before a test and study what each of the investigation was talking about, instead of reading the whole investigation. It was a class answer, so we could see some other strategies that other people used for their Investigation. It helped me grow because I could look at others and see what strategies they used.
This year, I have achieved some skill to use the negative and positive numbers easily. This will help me next year since we will be doing algebra, where the variables could be negative and positive numbers. Also, some of the terminology like inequalities could be revisited next year. This will definitely help me in the future because you need to know debt and surplus for money/financing. These skills are skills I can use for the rest of my life, and I completely understand them.
