Reflections (student and teacher)

“In math class, my peers and I worked diligently and with commitment to complete a geometric mural. The first thing we did was come up with a beginning design on paper. Once we had decided on a mural outline and design, we cut the board we would eventually use to draw our final mural on into four sections, each piece for a student. We then began to dilate our section of the drawing onto the board using a scale factor. This was the hardest part because it was tedious and involved lots of math. It was very easy to mess up and if you did, the rest of the mural would be wonky and not fit the way it was supposed to. It took a very long time because it wasn’t too much fun and we made a lot of errors that we later had to fix. I overcame this by not giving up and making small goals for myself along the way, such as being determined to finish two grid boxes per day. We then moved onto taping, so that our lines would be neat and clean, and painting our mural. This part was the most fun for me, especially mixing fun colors and using them in the mural. I learned so much in the process of this project. I learned a lot about using scale factors to create similar shapes and I get a lot better at using a protractor to measure angles. I also got better at measuring with a ruler. Other skills I improved in were painting, cutting wood, measuring, and sanding. This project demonstrates the concept of similarity because each shape from the original drawing was scaled up by a factor of 4.77, making the shape on the board similar to the first. This process is dilation. Our sides changed but the angles stayed the same and the sides grew by a scale factor. I also observed that the area and the perimeter of the original and dilated shapes had relationships! This project was so much fun and I learned a lot.” - Rylan Ascher