David's Portfolio

Audience Insight:

The key message I want the audience to understand when viewing my artwork is a general, overall understanding of who I am as a person. This includes certain values I have, personality traits, and characteristics. I way I communicated these was through my incorporation of symbolism. For example, the heart on the right represents empathy and wanting to help, the exclamation marks on the right represents my care for self expression. Moreover, the waves represents my values of living with the natural flow of life. The ladder stands for my strive for self improvement, and lastly the lighting rod on the top symbolizes my resilience towards struggles.

Risk and Experimentation:

During the creation of my artwork, a risk I took was experimenting with new materials. For example, I used a metal wire to act as a “fishing hook” in cooperation with my heart. This was risky for me as I was afraid the incorporation of a 3d object would break the cohesiveness of my artwork, and the effect would backfire. However, I was bold enough to incorporate it, and it did end up turning out well. This helped me express my message, as by making the heart “pump out” from using the metal wire, it makes the symbolism stronger as it provides a higher sense of realism and makes it more engaging+connected with the audience.

1. Evidence of Organization
   My science notebook became more useful as the school year continued, as I took more care to add details and clarity to my work.
2. Evidence of Active Learner Habits

I have improved on 3 learner skills throughout the semester, namely demonstrates persistence, demonstrates positive attitude, and completes work on time.

An area of growth I’ll need to work on is contributes as class/group. This is because I rarely actively answer questions in class or share my ideas in class discussions.

3. Evidence of Understanding of Key Concepts

I have overall decent understanding about materials taught in class, but I will need deeper understanding for semester 2 topics.

4. Evidence of Growth in Science Skills

• Standard 1: Developing and Using Models               
• Standard 2: Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions                  
• Standard 3: Engaging in Argument from Evidence (CER)                  
• Standard 4: Asking Questions and Defining Problems                      
• Standard 5: Using Mathematics and Computational Thinking
• Standard 6: Obtaining, Evaluating, and Communicating Information                      

BEFORE:

AFTER:

I showed significant growth in my ability to create and demonstrate information using models throughout the year.

Throughout this unit, during our eighth-grade pickleball unit, I really enjoyed developing my skills while having fun with my classmates. I practiced important techniques like fore and back hand serves, which helped me understand the game better. I felt a sense of teamwork as we encouraged each other while participating in doubles, both in wins and losses. Overall, this unit not only improved my physical fitness but also taught me valuable lessons about collaboration and sportsmanship that I will carry with me.

I showcased my abilities as both a creative learner and active learner during this project. For example, I was flexible with ideas, where I generated my own ideas but changed and edited it based on our group’s feedback. Furthermore, the image of the planning in my sketchbook effectively demonstrates the “process” section under creative learner. I demonstrated how I investigate and plan our clay vessel in my notebook, and then practicing and creating our design. I also demonstrated how I’m an active learner during this process, by actively participating in the process. Throughout the process, I actively asked and answered questions within our group, for example; for steps as scoring and coiling, I was able to answer questions my groupmates had and supporting the group along the way. Furthermore, for most class times, I was always prepared for class and came before class starts almost every time, while not missing any needed resources.

A sketchbook contributes to an artist’s creative process by designing and mapping out what they will do to create the product, what the product would look like, what materials are needed, and many other aspects. For example, we sketched out how the final product would look like before we started creating it, and we used that sketch to guide our way through how we would create the product. Moreover, we planned out how we can create each part, (e.g. from adding a coil), and followed it throughout our process of creating, using our planning as a guide.

https://www.canva.com/design/DAGxOAtj2Kw/Q7RKu9lzBMq1ELmtOZ-5bg/edit

Active Learner Habits

One strength I bring to math class is staying persistent when a problem is challenging, and not giving up quickly. This allows me to put in more effort and improve my math.
Another strength I bring is staying focus in class and avoid being off topic, this allows me to better my understanding for math topics.
My third strength is being consistent with my homework completion.

One habit I want to improve this semester is showing my work clearly and explaining my reasoning step by step.
This is an area of growth for me because I frequently mistake due to skipping steps or trying to solve problems in my head too quickly.

I will work on this habit my forcing myself to write out every step I take and clear up my reasoning.
One specific action I will take is going over the steps I took to solve a question and see if the steps I wrote down is sufficient to justify my answer.

Math Notation and Communication

Overtime, my notebook shows an increase in neatness and cleanliness. Furthermore, my notebook shows an improve in organization that makes my work easier to understand.

Evidence of Understanding of Key Concepts

U1 Sticker Project

Designing a Story Problem (Piecewise Function Project)

These work shows my growth overall, as they are representations of my understanding in different topics.

Overall, my works show that I can improve fast as a learner, and demonstrates my ability to perform high quality work.

My artwork reflects my surface level identity from representing hobbies I have (soccer), enjoying festivals (Christmas), and vacation. However, these icons dive deeper in my identity, representing my appreciation and enjoyment of spending quality time with family during festivals or vacations; and enjoying time with friends. The smiley face I chose to include represented my wish of staying happy and joyful, being optimistic in tough situations.

Some design strategies I incorporated included using proportions of objects to place emphasis on certain parts, creating visual weight and using the size of other objects around it to create contrast. Furthermore, the color blue I chose for my background effectively allowed other objects in my sketchbook cover to stand out and let audience’s attentions be drawn towards.

The intended audience engagement to my art piece was through using different proportion for the size of objects to make my football stand out, being the first focus point of my artwork. Next, I intended viewers to follow either trees as “arrows” that shifts the direction of where their eyes are looking, seeing other objects I included in my artwork.

https://saschina-my.sharepoint.com/:w:/r/personal/kirsten_baldwin_saschina_org/_layouts/15/Doc.aspx?sourcedoc=%7BF337D017-AC0E-4E21-A9AC-D9E9FE0DECFA%7D&file=David%20Geng%20-%20L4%20Unit%202%20Design%20a%20Story%20Problem%20-%203759770.docx&action=default&mobileredirect=true&wdOrigin=APPHOME-WORD.FILEBROWSER.FILES-SHAREDWITHMESPARTAN&wdPreviousSession=915f323f-3c17-42f1-8892-1c40f01a98bc&wdPreviousSessionSrc=AppHome-Word

1. Describe your story and what real-life situation it modeled?

Our story was about Johnny, an employee’s annual income throughout his years working at the company called “The 67”. Our model represented his overall increasing annual income, increasing until the 4th-5th year working at the company, and lastly when he gambled all his money away.

2. What part of your project are you most proud of? Why?

I’m most proud of how clearly I explained what each slope means in my graph and how it connects to the story. In my example, every slope shows how Johnny’s income changes over time. For instance, during the “As an Intern” stage, the slope of 25,000 means Johnny’s income goes up by $25,000 each year at a steady rate. When the slope is 0 in the “Official Worker” stage, it shows that his income stays the same for that year. In the “Gambling” stage, the negative slope of –60,000 shows that his income is decreasing, which makes sense in the context of the story. I also pointed out that the steepest slope is during the “Senior Developer” stage, meaning that’s when Johnny’s income increases the most.

I’m also proud of how I explained why slope-intercept form works best for this problem. In this form, the slope shows how much Johnny’s income changes each year, and the y-intercept shows his starting salary. That makes the graph and equation easy to understand right away. Compared to point-slope form, slope-intercept form is simpler and more direct, since you don’t need extra steps to interpret what the equation is telling you.

3. What was the hardest part of creating your piecewise function?

The hardest part was managing my time. There were a lot of parts to this project, and it was easy to spend too much time on one section and then feel rushed on the others. If I improved my time management and had a clear idea on when the deadline is, I would have finished the project with less stress.

4. If you could revise one part of this project, what would you improve and how?

If I could revise one part, I would improve how clearly I labeled and explained each interval on the graph. I would add more clearer notes or annotations directly on the graph to make it easier to see which part of Johnny’s career each line represents and why the slope changes.

5. What did this project help you understand better about piecewise functions?

This project allowed me to strengthen my understanding about piecewise functions on basically every aspect of it. It had a well rounded requirement on our understanding of eg. slope, intercepts, and different formulas on equations of the function. Overall, the projected bettered my ability to deal with piecewise functions.