1.Designing Your Dream House

Have you ever dreamed about being an architect? Do you consider yourself organizationally proficient? Do you enjoy decorating your house with comfy furniture, cool new appliances that can talk to you, or vibrant colored wall hangings? Are you an insanely creative thinker? Do you just want your math teacher to get to the point and let you know what Benchmark Project #1 is all about? Ok, ok…I’ll get to the point but brace yourself because this is going to be a fun challenge.

In unit one we studied ratios and proportions as well as the relationship between life-sized objects and scaled down models of these objects. Yes, the concepts of scales and scale factors are at the heart of your first benchmark assignment.

This year, I am in Ms. Thompson's Algebra One class. For our first quarter benchmark, we were put in groups of three or four. My group included Blase, Tariq, and Dylan. For this benchmark, the goal was to create a blueprint of a room with 5 unique items of our own, which mine was the bedroom. We had to measure the items and scale down to create a blueprint that someone would actually be able to use. It took a few steps to get done the final product and post the information and such on druple.

The first benchmark in Ms. Thompson’s Algebra class challenged us to create the blueprints our “dream house” in groups of four.  How does this relate to mathematics, you might ask?  Well, it’s quite simple- we’re designing the blueprints for it, so we must measure out and scale down the objects we would have in the house.  We each had to have a minimum of five unique objects in our rooms of the house (meaning that there can only be one in that house), coming out to 20 total.  The project was very fun and educational at the same time.

I am Kyla Carden and I am doing this project for my Algebra 1 class. My whole class split up into groups and researched different sequence. My group was made up of Jasmine, Will F., Jason, and myself. Our group was assigned the Sierpinski Triangle. Waclaw Sierpinski founded the Sierpinski Triangle. The Sierpinski Triangle is a geometric pattern that is formed by connecting the middle points of the sides of the triangle. When you do this you create 4 triangles. You subtract the middle triangle at the bottom from the sequence and so on, and so on. This sequence contains an infinite amount of triangles. Although this applies to geometry it has an arithmetic formula, which is (n) = 3^(n-1).

Recently, our algebra class was required to research different sequences as part of several "mini-projects."  Students were divided into groups, and each was assigned a different sequence to research, and in the end posting our discoveries on Drupal.  The group I was in was assigned triangular and rectangular sequences.  I was then appointed to the research of triangular sequences, so naturally I specialize in them.

This is my third quater benchmark and it shows my ratings against a band's discography. Our objective was to find the slope for our graph using Sketchpad.

1) In this project I had to define what a power sequence is then upload my work onto my class blog. 

2) In order to do this, I had to research online what a power sequence is and used old text books to see if I could find anything in there.

3) If I could do one thing differently, It would be asking for better directions on how to upload to the class blog. It was my first benchmark in algebra at SLA and I had no idea how to work the blog.

My quarter 1 benchmark for algebra

We worked together to answer questions, and inform people

about certain shapes and formulas

I really liked how this project turned out, but if I had the chance to do it over again,

I think I would try to find out a little more information about my topic, like

maybe a few "fun facts."

here is the link:

http://ealgebrabm1.wikispaces.com/Rectangular+Numbers+2

In this assignment, we were to pick a topic for study and compare it by graphing a scatter plot in sketchup. I finished the assignment with time to spare, and honestly didn't like it that much. I believe it taught me how to graph on the computer alot better than I originally understood. If I could redo this project I would take ALOT more time on it.

Did a wiki and a powerpoint on Pascal's Triangle