Thursday, November 21, 2013

SOLVING ALGEBRAIC EQUATIONS - ADDITION

 Here is our current target. This will stay up until we have mastered addition, subtraction, multiplication, & division equations.



To get everyone ready to solve equations we began by working some very simple number sentence problems like:







Students were quick to tell me the answer was 4. I then asked them to explain why the answer was 4 and to be able to tell how they figured this out. Here are their answers
  • I counted up from 5 to 9
  • I subtracted 9 - 5
All perfect answers. I explained that the subtraction was the best choice because not always are we able to count up easily because of fractions, decimals, or really big numbers.

We then inserted a variable into a number sentence problem and students realized they had been thinking algebraically for a long time. 






For our 1st day working on addition equations, my main goal was getting students to show their work correctly. So I showed two examples with work shown. This is what I expect to see on their homework.


















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