More practice evaluating expressions. Two choices, everyone progressing to more complex expressions.

Today we explored equivalent expressions b4 formally introducing associative commutative and distributive properties

Exploring equivalent expressions. Students intuit the distributive property.

And the commutative and associative properties. Tomorrow we formalize.

Intro'ed associative, commutative and distributive properties w/ images like this one from mathsisfun.com/associative-co…

On Monday we played a game to practice applying the commutative and distributive property

Today students will learn about factoring expressions, applying what they learned in the number theory unit.

Tonight's homework is to correct their first quiz of the expressions unit. Families, ask to see how it went.

Last week considered algebraic expressions. Students matched up words, area model and expressions.

Today we formalized simplifying algebraic expressions

Homework will be much simpler than what we did in class

What follows is a series of Tweets about using bar diagrams. We started by using them to find parts of wholes.

Learn how to use diagrams on basic problems before tackling more challenging ones.

Students begin to recognize usefulness when they need to find whole, and only know the part.

Students see that each box in the diagram is an equal part of a whole. If the part is 56, and there are 4 boxes, then each box is 14.

Seven parts in a whole so 14 * 7 give the missing number.

Finally, we use the diagrams in problem solving. No algebra needed!

Complexity increases: Ms J’s class is 2 1/2 X bigger than Mr. K’s class. If there are 35 students total, how many stdts in Mr. K's class?

This the 8th in a series of Tweets explaining bar diagrams. Please read from the bottom.

6th graders should be bringing their latest math quiz home tonight. Families should ask about it. Students are required to get it signed.