Have you ever struggled in math? Well you have come to the right place. This is about me growing in math and getting better at solving equations. I used to be very bad at solving equations because I couldn’t get the right answer for x because I miss one step. A story would be in my house while I was doing this program called math wizard I encountered a problem dealing with equations and I knew how to do it, but I always used to get it wrong because I would miss one step and x would be a much unexpected number. That is a way I grew in persistence because I would rush and not take my time, now I would take my time and not rush and get everything right, so I could be happy to have an astonishing grade on a test. We did a lot of things in math about solving equations it was mostly in Moving Straight Ahead. Moving Straight Ahead is a book about linear relationships and we got into equations because there is a slope intercept form which is y=mx+b.  In investigation 3.4 we had a lot of equations to solve step by step. We also had a test on equations and because I grew in persistence and I got a hundred on it. I grew in persistence in this class because even if I was bad at equations before I came to the 7th grade I had to try or persist myself to get better at it and to understand equations.

 

One artifact that I had was from my notebook where I did the problems for 3.4 in my book. We were doing 3.4 because it had so many equations you had to solve, and it was helpful for me because it gave me a better understanding of equations and how to solve them.  There are a lot of terms you must know to solve equations. Two things that you need to know are coefficient and variable. Coefficient is a number in front of a variable and that number is the rate of change or the unit rate only if it is multiplied by a certain type of variable, the certain type must be the independent variable (which is x on a graph). Another equation that is helpful in using graphs and finding what Y is on the graph you use the equation y=mx+b. This is called the slope-intercept form and had trouble using this too because I had trouble finding m which is the slope. Variable means a letter that represents a number and the number is unknown, so we use a letter. One problem that I did was 5x+10=20, so we want to find x so what you do is first you subtract 10 on both sides, you subtract because it was +10 so if you take 10 to the other side it will be subtraction. Then the answer would be 5x=10, so know you divide 5 on both sides and you get tour answer which is that x=2. The goal of the project was to find what x equals and to get better and quicker at it. I grew in persistence by solving equations because I do not give up and try and try until I get the answer. Also, in one of the problems in 3.4 we had to solve this long equation on both sides, so I got it wrong 3 times, so I never gave up and kept on trying and I found out what x equaled.  The equation was 15-4x=10x+45 and what I did wrong was that I took the 10x to the other side and I did not change the sign to -10x (it was in the other side, so we must do the opposite of where it was) so my whole equation got messed up be that little mistake.

 

My second artifact is the unit test for the Moving Straight Ahead book. There were three questions we had to do, and they were 3x+8=35, 12+5x=7x+3, and 3(x+1) =12 and I will tell you how I found the answers. I got a hundred on the unit test, so I got a hundred on this too. I got 3x+8=35 by subtracting 8 on both sides and I got 27 so now it was 3x=27 then I divided by 3 on both sides then I got that x=3. For the 12+5x=7x+3 I first subtracted 3 on both sides and got 9 so I got 9+5x=7x, then I subtracted 5x on both side and got 9=2x then I divided by 2 on both sides and I found out that x=4.5. For the last question I had 3(x+1) =12 and I used the distributive property to get 3x+3=12, Then I subtracted 3 on both sides and I got 3x=9, then the last step was that I divided three on both sides and I got x=3.  Distributive property is a property where you expend the form so for example, 3(5+2) I want to take out the parentheses, so I distribute the thing outside the parentheses to inside of the parentheses. So, for this example we multiply the 3 to the five and the two so the answer would be 21. We must do these steps because we want to find what x equals and these steps could help you in college and high school, also these are the easiest way to find x. I grew in persistence in equations because I tried and tried and got everything right and now I am very good at solving equations.

 

 I grew in persistence because as you can see that I tried and tried, and I did not ask the teacher for help until I got the answer or when I was really confused. Now you have read this it will help you in math more and you can answer all the questions for solving equations. DRSS made me a better person because of the five qualities and me getting better at equations. This growth will matter to me and you because you will need math for almost everything and you will have to solve equations and to be persistent in everything to achieve your goals. Equations and persistence will help you in the future because you will deal with finding x a lot and they will be very hard, so you will need to use persistence.