Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Trying to find Math games to explain the balancing concept of Algebra is a little challenging.  Games exist, but at the entry point, for students who may not grasp Integers, it is proving to be a little challenging.

Here is one link with a detailed explanation, which I will use in my lesson today:

http://www.algebra-class.com/balancing-equations.html

Here is another explanation, with a hands on feel to it.  The explanation is not as long as the link above:

http://www.math.com/school/subject2/lessons/S2U3L1GL.html

While this is not about solving the equations you have been working on for the past couple of days, it will give you some insight into the importance of balancing.  It requires some thinking on your part.
http://www.mathplayground.com/algebraic_reasoning.html

This one could work for the future unit on Algebra for Grade 8s.  Since they have worked through a unit on Integers, this should work for them, but the Grade 7s are welcome to try it.

http://www.mathplayground.com/AlgebraEquations.html

Before moving to the games, I thought it was best that we work through some more examples.  Here is one we worked on this morning.  Each step of the equation has a detailed explanation:

Here is another late entry of another example from the homework:

In returning to our discussion on Narrative Paragraphs (please forgive me, I am capitalizing it), we looked at example we worked on together in class.  Some of the class members thought we should remove a sentence and revise the concluding paragraph.  Here is now how it looks:

We also changed added a detail to the second topic sentence about visiting a park.  We could have added going to work, but we didn't.  This addition allowed the concluding sentence to make more sense:  we mention "fun" and I would like to think that going to a park on a bike would be fun.

In making reference to the Book Talk assignment, I am going to share a strategy Junior has been using:

So he wouldn't forget details, he wrote jot notes on the chapters.  This will be important for the Retell section of the assignment.

In preparing for explaining how the subtractions of Integers work, I am going to show this video as one of the supplements for the lesson: