Summer SAVY, Session 2 Day 2, Adventures in Algebra (3rd – 4th)
Welcome back to Adventures in Algebra!
This morning, we began with another Math Think from Graham Fletcher. We watched as he tried to balance a scale with an orange and 1-inch cubes. Mathematicians devised that figuring out equal weights on each side would tell us how many cubes Fletchy needs to place to make the scales balance. Then, we continued to explore the property of balance in algebra through Hands-On Equations. With this amazing math tool, mathematicians successfully solved equations like 2x + 7 = 3x + 4. Thursday, we’ll continue to solve increasingly complex equations with this visual. Ask your mathematician about “X-Man” and “legal moves” in Hands-on Equations!
Students also began to brainstorm for their board games. We created a brainstorming web with these categories – Theme/Title, Objective, Rules/Legal Moves, Materials, and Turn. It will really prepare the mathematicians if you talk through their board game plan at home and ask questions about the game to check for logic and clarity. We also started to draw a game board blueprint. When we return on Thursday, we’ll do a procedural writing lesson to compose game instructions and actually start drawing/creating the game boards.
In the afternoon, we continued our explorations of patterns and algebraic thinking with a hundreds chart exploration! Students identified patterns with multiples. This empowered us to solve for variables on arrays. Once mathematicians developed rules for navigating the hundreds chart to solve variables, we expanded our skills with arrow math. Given any array, students developed operations represented by arrows. They proved how to undo arrow math with inverse operations; this thinking prepared us to level up the algebra by balancing equations to solve for variables with multiple operations. Again, for each lesson and problem, students created Awesome Algebra cards for their board games.
Tonight, you can ask your mathematician about the concept of their board game and write out some arrow math problems and teach you how to solve them!
Ms. Whiting