At a glance
Individual · ongoing all course · one entry after every class · collected at the end of each unit
What you are making
A running record of your thinking: one short entry after every class, written the same day while the details are warm. Ten honest minutes beats thirty performed ones — and entries are private. I read them; other students never do. The journal only works if you can admit in it what you would not say at the boards — that the transformations lost you the moment , , , and all changed at once, that rational exponents still feel like a spell you recite rather than a thing you understand.
How entries work
Each entry answers four prompts, in whatever order helps:
- What we did — the facts, briefly: the warm-up, the thinking task, where your group got to.
- What clicked — the moment something connected, and what did the connecting: a sketch, a classmate’s phrasing, a smaller case.
- What is foggy — named precisely. “Functions are confusing” is weather; “I lose the sign on in ” is a location.
- What I would try — one concrete move for next class. Not “focus more”: something you could actually do.
Conjectures are welcome any time. “I think an exponential function eventually outgrows any quadratic — Always, Sometimes, Never made me want to test it” is a perfect journal sentence — dated, testable, and yours.
Success criteria and collection
The journal comes in each unit, read against these criteria — Journal Checklist turns them into a self-check before handing in.
| Quality | What it looks like |
|---|---|
| Regularity | An entry for every class, written close to the day |
| Honesty | Real fog named, not just victories |
| Precision | Foggy things located, not just felt |
| Growth | ”What I would try” items reappear as things actually tried |