My group collaborated on each part of the assignment but we each focused more on one part than the others. The part I focused the most on was the creation of a new piece that extended the concepts from the original. A part of this process was figuring out how to make a tile that would look nice when connected to other tiles regardless of the rotation. How we ended up doing this was ensuring that the lines touched the sides of the tile in the same spot on each side. Then I started experimenting with different patterns to connect the spots on the edge of the tile. Every pattern I tried was interesting or cool looking in some way. This was interesting to me because I think there is a lot of potential for this to be used to teach about rotations. Each kid could make their own design and then would have to look at different ways that design rotated. Because this type of design seems to always create an interesting pattern, this could be a good way to allow kids to create something themselves but to give them an outline for it that would help make sure the end result was something cool they would hopefully like. I think being able to create something that is visually interesting with rotations would add interest and motivation to the topic of for lots of kids.
This insight made me think that when I am teaching it may be good to look for and think about art made with the type of math I want to teach. If I hadn’t seen the original piece and worked with it, I would not have realized that these types of patterns could be made using rotations. I think that knowledge could easily be used to make a more interesting lesson than I would otherwise be able to make.
I also think this project served as a good reminder that different ways of doing things are interconnected. What I mean by this is that math can be done through art. This seems to me to be particularly important because it is likely that some students may not be excited about math but may be verry passionate about art. So, incorporating non-traditional ways of doing math makes it easier for students who don’t normally enjoy the subject to have a good experience of it in your classroom.
Another, thing this reminded me of is the effort required to create something. For me this came in the form of gluing 100 tiles to cardboard, cutting each one out, lining them up in a grid, and then attaching Velcro to each one. The reason this is a good reminder is that this project inspired me to incorporate similar projects in my own class. However, remembering that these types of creative projects take time is important when I consider assigning them to my own students. If students feel stressed and rushed to finish a project, they likely will not enjoy it, nor will it lead them to have a positive experience of math. So, the reminder that stuff like this can be time consuming is good, so I don’t accidently overburden my own students
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