• Why might incorporating graphic design into your classroom be valuable?

          I think incorporating graphing design into my classroom is valuable because a lot of the students I teach typically learn and remember things better if it is connected to something that is easier to remember  For example, my Geometry students sometimes struggle remembering how many degrees the angles are in different shapes if I just ask them verbally.  However, if they see the shape in front of them they are able to make the connection between how many angles are in the shape and how many degrees all the angle add up to then they can come up with what the individual angle degrees are.  This idea can help with other concepts as well like graphing inequalities to find how many solutions there are to equations or systems of equations and being able to identify different 3D shapes to find surface area and volume.  Overall, I think giving students something to visually connect to help them remember a concept is a great idea and can help them learn the basics then build into more difficult topics.  

• Thinking about how our students absorb information, how might we better support the learners in our classrooms? 

          This question really made me think about my Geometry students and how sometimes they really struggle to identify basic 3D shapes.  They always seem to confuse what the base of the shape is and that is KEY when identifying the accurate name of the shape and then finding the surface area and volume of the shape.  I think I can better support these efforts a couple of different ways.  First, I would make sure to have many different examples of the shapes that my students could pass around and actually touch/look at while we name the different shapes.  Second, I could incorporate a fun Kahoot game to practice just basic identification of the different shapes for practice before applying formulas for surface area and volume.  Finally, I would really want to make sure my students my students understood why were called a shape what we did so I would make sure to clearly define the different parts of the shape so they know visually what piece was what. 

          

• Envision an activity, unit or event that is approaching how might you incorporate some of the design principles?

          One topic that always seems to be overwhelming for students is the topic of quadratics and especially quadratic modeling.  These are typically word problems that sometimes have a picture to go along with it or just many different parts to one problem.  One of the most important principles I could see applying to these problems is ORGANIZATION!.  A lot of the time my students struggle purely because they cannot follow their own work because it is all over the place.  Having my students organize and clearly write their work it can can definitely help them understand the concepts better.  In addition, knowing that these problems tend to be word problems, I would want to make sure the word problems are written correctly and accurately so my students can understand the information the way I want them to.