SOLs Covered: 6.PFA.3 Write & Solve One-Step Linear Equations
Math Unit: 09 One-Step Linear Equations
Daily Agenda: February 3-7, 2025
Upcoming Assessments: SUM Quiz 9 One-Step Equations (Fri. 2/14)
Good afternoon! While it's been a jam-packed week, I still have quite a bit to do before I can head out for the weekend, so I'm going to try to keep this quick. After taking the quiz on Monday as promised, we started our algebra unit. While the topic can be intimidating for many, students' exposure to it in 6th grade eases them into it. We started the unit with just going over the vocabulary exclusively the first two days and moved onto reviewing the properties which allow us to solve them.
We only started solving our first equations today, which was approached a little differently. Part of the standard expects students to be able to solve with concrete manipulatives and pictorial representations. While the more traditional approach to that is algebra tiles, I find that's initially confusing to students as it's too abstract. My solution to that is snacks! For starters, kids always enjoy any activity that involves food and second, they connect better with snack items, in this case animal crackers, goldfish crackers, gummies, and gushers. We only just brushed the surface today, but we'll continue on with this next week and introduce other manipulatives as well as the more traditional algebra tiles while also solving them "old school" by working it out algebraically on paper.
That should cover the highlights for now and it's time I start redoing our manipulative tubs for this unit, so I'll close things out here. As always, please feel free to email if you have any questions or concerns. Have a great weekend!