Content Objectives
Oklahoma state standards are leaning more towards creating problem solvers and literate math students. For me as an educator, bringing out those skills and having them think through the relevance of mathematical concepts in the classroom is sometimes a challenge. Since math is a subject that is thought of by many people as being only procedural, I would like to help my students see that there is more to the subject than just formulas and steps. It is about ideas. To help guide the unit, the standards that will be addressed from the Oklahoma Academic Standards are:
(1) Use substitution to simplify and evaluate algebraic expressions; and
(2) Justify steps in generating equivalent expressions by identifying the properties used, including the properties of operations (associative, commutative, and distributive laws) and the order of operations, including grouping symbols.
In order to not only fill in these standard gaps, but also clear up other misconceptions, Yale National Initiative (YNI) fellows have developed units that complement each other within the topics of translating word phrases, simplifying expressions, and solving equations. The curriculum units are written by 2017 math fellows Rachelle Soroten, Jeffrey Rossiter, and Sally Yoo, and are closely related with this one. These units, depicted in the flow chart (see Figure 1 below), will not be following the traditional textbook way of teaching these topics. In our YNI seminar, Roger Howe, seminar leader, saw a connection between the four units that were being created. He believes that, in order to get students motivated to translate verbal phrases into expressions, they need context through the word problems, which is the basis of Rachelle’s unit, Formulating Algebraic Equations from Word Problems. Once they understand how to translate word problems into simple expressions, they will go into the various ways to translate word phrases that will become more complex through Jeffrey’s unit, Introduction of the variable by forming and interpreting expressions. That will lead into this unit, the third section of the chart below, where students will be able to use their knowledge about writing algebraic expressions to simplify them. Finally, they will be able to put all of these skills from the previous units together in Sally’s unit, Making Sense of Solving Equations through Word Problems - The Cornerstone of Algebra, to be able to solve algebraic equations.
Figure 1
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