In our second semester, we have implemented a completely open academic schedule. In addition to the work being done on my project, I have also been working to complete my math and English standards. These are being accomplished partly with the help of the teachers, and partly without. I am working at my own pace, keeping up with self set deadlines, and collaborating with peers throughout this process.
Math:
In math, our standards are entirely covered by completing all ten chapters of the book. I have completed seven of such chapters, and am currently working on the eighth with Alex Sitze. Until this point we had been working by simply doing the pretest and using the book to learn all of the problems on such, but with chapter 8 this changed. It has a well earned reputation as the hardest chapter, and as such we decided to learn it section by section instead in the hopes of more thoroughly understanding the material. This chapter took a large degree of toil to work through, and often left us staring blankly at the papers we were working on. We now only have one last hill to climb, and this has been shown to be the biggest of all. Alex and I will be working on this last beast over the course of an entire week, if his project (creating,hosting, and organizing a school talent show) complies.This problem is a conics problem in which we must find the intersection of two circles. In the problemwe are given two sets of points that are the centers of the circles, the radii, and told to solve for the intersection of the circles. This requires isolating a variable, plugging the result into the other circle equation, solving for the now singular variable, and then finally plugging that back into the original equation to find the coordinates. I have already taken a few attempts at it, and gotten different answers each time, each of which were wrong. The struggle will continue; however, we have resources in our peers and teachers. After we finish this problem we will tighten up any weak areas in our knowledge and take this test after several long weeks.
English:
In English, despite a great deal of struggling with procrastination due to distant deadlines, I have finally begun to outline my paper over the book Anthem, by Ayn Rand. In this time I have taken classes of my choosing with Mr. Sitze, giving me a better understanding of developing unique interpretations through quotes. In this I have also done several practices towards paragraph level argumentation that have opened my eyes to being able to write better. I have learned the MLA setup for quotation, have used parallel structure correctly, and have learned a proper format towards setting up a argumentative paragraph. During this I have done five argumentative paragraphs that have been reviewed with Mr. Sitze, and I feel far more confident in my ability to develop a claim in a paragraph using a quote.I searched for the quotes to do so in my essay currently, and settled on a single quote to base the entire essay over. This is a new area for me, and I hope to grow in my ability to adapt to essay related changes that will be thrown my way in later years. I personally highly enjoy the method of learning that the open program is facilitating; the ability to work at the pace I choose has allowed greater understanding of subjects I may have had a hard time on in a specifically allotted time period, and allowed me to move quicker through the subjects that make sense to me quickly. I will write another blog detailing my open academic status when there is progress to report over my English and Math standards.
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