Developing Core Competencies through Middle School Assignments

Core Competency Portfolio By Cambria Douglas

Middle School- A Day in the Life For this assignment we were meant to make our own civilization in a group, one of the tasks I was assigned was to write a day in the life of a peasant in our civilization. The core competencies that I used for this assignment are communication and collaboration, research and information literacy and critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making. I used communication and collaboration because I was sick the whole time and had to do my part of the project from home and had to communicate with everyone digitally. We had a big group chat set up so we could all work from home and talk to each other. I used research and information literacy when I researched what a peasant did back then and what their daily routine was. I used critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making because it was my job to put together the project and find a good way to present it. We put it all in a PowerPoint and I even recording my part in case I wasn't healthy enough to go to school on the day of the presentation.

Math- Exponent Person vs Pigeon Person For this assignment we were instructed to work in groups to show our understanding of exponents, my partner and I decided to write a short story. The core competencies I used for this were thinking, communication and communication and collaboration. I used thinking when I wrote a short story for a math class instead of making a pamphlet or poster to display the information. I used communication when my partner and I talked in class about what we should write and how we should word it. We did most of the work in class but couldn t finish it all. Finally, I used communication and collaboration when I communicated digitally with my partner. My partner and I would send each other our ideas for what we should write in the story, and I would write it in because I was the assigned writer.

Social Studies- Building a House 1750 For this assignment we were instructed to work in groups to figure out everything we would need to know to build a house in the year 1750, I was assigned to do the math for the house building. The core competencies I used for this were communication, research and information literacy and communication and collaboration. I used communication when I talked with my group about where we should build our house, what it should look like and what part of the project each of us were doing. I used research and information literacy when I researched the technology they had in 1750. I also researched the surrounding area and found the best place to build our house. Finally, I used communication and collaboration when I had to work at home to finish the project and was communicating with the rest of my group through a group chat. To make this assignment better I could ve used critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making to find a better way to present this project rather than just reading it out to the class off my computer.