Week 8 is already here and I am now finally caught up in the work I missed during golf season (yayyyy!!!!). I am now feeling much more comfortable with derivatives. I love using the chain rule because it is easy to use in most cases and I can easily remember the process. U substitution still concerns me however because I don't really understand it but last night I studied for an hour so I think that I should do alright on the quiz today. What confused me most about U substitution was when I was suppose to take the antiderivative and transfer it back to the regular function.
A discovery I had this week was that I had copied down the quotient rule incorrectly in my notes. I had it written as V*U' - U*U' all divided by V^2 when really it is V*U' - U*V' all divided by V^2. After discovering this I was mad at myself for not noticing this earlier because it most likely cost me some points on my last quiz. However, I am very glad I have it figured out now so I won't get that wrong on our quiz today! I am not sure how this quiz will go today but I did study for it much longer then I have for any other quiz so I hope that i
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As I expected, this week was difficult for me due to the fact that I took two tests over material that I understood about 75% of. This test coming up scares me! But the good news is I will not be missing school anymore because our golf season is now over. Sitting in class Thursday while we were learning material for the next chapter I thought to myself, wow this stuff is easy when Cresswell explains it. There is no doubt in my mind that last weeks material would have been easier for me if I would have been in class when it was taught the first time. But now that I am passed that, I can now focus on the road ahead and make sure I make up for it by doing good the rest of the year. The material we learned Thursday really makes sense to me. I enjoy using the chain rule because the constant pattern in each answer allows for me to understand this section even better. I'm not sure if we did anything with it on Friday since I wasn't there but if we did I'm sure I will be able to catch on fast! This week was rough for me because I had to miss a lot of school and did not learn very much about derivatives. After taking the first quiz it hit me how much I had missed so I began to panic. Mr. Cresswell saved me by allowing me to retake the quiz. After being granted with this opportunity I studied hard and made sure I knew the content better. After completing the quiz I felt that it went much better then before. The only part that still concerns me is using the power function and quotient function. I do not understand how to set them up. We have our next quiz tomorrow and I do not feel prepared but Lauren offered to help me study tonight so hopefully with her help I will be able to do well on the quiz! This week in AP Calc we fully dove into derivatives! I unfortunately only was able to make it to class two days this week because of PD day on Monday and a golf match on both Wednesday and Friday. During Tuesday's lesson I really understood what Mr. Cresswell was talking about but when it came to homework that night I felt lost because I had problems with a fraction in a fraction. Missing school the next day was rough because I couldn't ask questions during the CCC. Then on Thursday I was a day behind my classmates who had learned a new skill with derivatives while I was absent. During the CCC for Thursday I was able to catch up a little bit though. Yesterday Mr. Cresswell taught us about graphing derivatives. This was a amazing lecture because I was able to see how the graph of the derivative really related to the original graph because the zeros were the extrema on the original graph and where the graph was negative, the slopes on the original graph were negative and vise versa. This is a really cool concept and I can't wait to do more with it on Monday!
During this week of A.P. Calc we had our first test. I found some questions a little challenging because I don't understand how to show that an equation can be solved to equal one to prove that it is a function when you have to use difficult algebra or larger number analysis to figure it out. I think that I felt pretty well prepared for the test other than these though. In class we moved on to the next chapter. Mr. Cresswell used a worksheet activity to show us that the closer you examine the data, the more you find out and the more accurate you can be. I think this activity helped us understand not only that we must examine the data closely but also why it is important that we do so. On Tuesday we will begin to take notes on the new chapter and get our homework assigned. I am a bit concerned because I will have two important golf matches on Wednesday and Friday this week so I will have to miss school those days. Hopefully I will be able to catch up and fully understand the material! This week in AP Calc we had our first quiz! It was not as bad as I expected it to be, I think I actually did pretty well on it but I guess I will find out when we get our scores back. The majority of this week was about limits. We learned about limits last year so these were not too challenging for me. However, I struggled with questions 19 and 20 on our section 2.3 homework because they involved piece-wise functions. I have a problem with picturing what the graph is suppose to look like on my calculator because the part that is shown is not necessarily all valid depending on what X equals. After Mr. Cresswell showed us number 19 on the bored with his graph that took away the extra part of the function that isn't valid it made more sense to me. Numbers 45 and 46 were challenging to most of the class today but I really understood them so I was able to go around and show people how to solve the problems using the whiteboard. We plugged the answer in the calculator to check it and we found out it my answer was correct so that was pretty cool :) We have our first test on Monday, hopefully it goes well!This week in A.P. Calc we did section 2.1 and 2.2. We started off the week with a lab assignment which was a bit difficult but not too bad. We then had our first homework assignment which I feel I understood pretty well. Then coming into class the next day and going over the problems I didn't get I was able to really understand the assignment. I loved working with my peers and helping them learn some of the problems too. This seemed to be a very effective method for me. I think this week went well and I think I understood the material fairly well. I am worried for our first test though. The hardest things for me to do are the problems where we have to use algebra to show our work because I have a problem remembering what I can and can't do to find the answer. Hopefully I will be able to figure out the problems on our quiz! Leading up to this week I was nervous about AP Calc because I was scared that I wouldn't remember the things I learned from last year. However, after being in this class for a week now, I am feeling more comfortable in the class. I'm glad working with other students is encouraged because it helps me to learn by discussing the problems with other students. I absolutely love the white boards because it helps when explaining a problem to my classmates. I think I will learn a lot in this class this year. This year was the first year since 7th grade that I didn't have math homework on the first day of school. That's one way I can tell this will be a great class! :) When I first opened my packet I felt discouraged because it seemed like a lot of work that I wouldn't remember how to do. Once I actually looked at the problems I realized they weren't really that bad. Mr. Cresswell taught us an easier way of figuring out how to find the volume of a solid. You simply have to find the area of the base and multiply it by the height no matter what kind of solid it is. After discovering this my packet became much easier. The position vs. speed problem was easy to do mathematically but the biggest challenge was trying to read the screen to get our data because it was very blurry. Now I am almost done with my packet. After we go through the packet on Monday I will feel very confident about our assessment on Tuesday. |
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March 2014
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