In math we do key problems usually after an investigation. A key problem basically reviews what we had just learned in the investigation. When I do them after investigations, I always think that I am going to do fantastic on it and so I skim over the directions and then turn it in early instead of looking over it and making sure I did all of the questions. A lot of times I will skip over a part of the question that says to like explain how you did something or why it is right or wrong. I then lose points for not doing something I know how to do and wanting to turn it in as soon as possible. I really like having high grades so I did not like this and so I feel like since the beginning of the year, I have really started to read direction more carefully and to check my work.

At the beginning of the year in October we took a partner quiz. A partner quiz is where we take a quiz but we can discuss with our partner/partners what we are doing or what we should do for the problems. On this quiz we had to make a table using our equation or line we had made in the previous questions. When I read the question I only read the part that said to use your line and so in doing that, all of my answers were wrong. I ended up losing 10 points on the quiz which resulted in me getting a 17/27. When I got it back I knew that I was going to revise so that I could bring that up since I knew exactly what to do. When I revised it and read the question again, I saw that it said you should also use your equation to find the answers and in doing so I got all of them right and got partial credit back. Getting a 62% on a quiz where I knew everything we were doing really helped me to realize that I really needed to read directions more carefully.

Another thing we did was an in-class problems after investigation 4.3. It was about equations, tables, and scatterplots. Scatter pots show the relation of one variable compared to another (For example, two variables could be height and weight). For problem B, we had to write an equation for the data if it was linear. For this problem I wrote an explanation for what the equation would be if it was linear but I never actually wrote an equation out. This is an example of when I needed to have looked over my work before turning it in. I ended up losing ½ a point for not writing an equation and then another point on the next problem. And since it was only a 6 point assignment I got a 4.5/6 which is a 75%. If I would have looked over my work, I probably would have seen that I did not completely finish the question and could have brought up my score.

Recently, we did a packet about algebra tiles, which are tiles that have lengths of x, y, or 1 and help to make polynomial expression, and polynomial equations. A polynomial expression is an expression consisting of variables and coefficients. It also only uses addition, subtraction, and multiplication in the problem (Ex: 3x2 + 4x – 2). This was new thing we had not done before and that I was not taught before in earlier grades so it was all very confusing. So at first I didn’t read all of the directions and when Ms. Schultz was going one of the problems I saw that I did not simplify my models and I had not written the simplified expression. I had drawn models for the original expressions. When Ms. Schultz started to go over a problem she told us we should be simplifying all of the expressions and drawing the models for the simplified expression. Since I had done neither of those, I had to reread the directions and restart the problems. If I had not done this, I would have gotten 10 of the questions wrong. I ended up getting a 25/26 which is much better than what I would have gotten if I didn’t read the directions after she went over it.

I have definitely learned to reread directions after getting bad grades on assignments where I didn’t read the directions carefully and I feel that I definitely improved on doing so.