Description

Students participate in activities that provide a conceptual understanding of the role of variables in expressions and equations.

Levels

• Grades 5 through 7.

Preparation Time

30 minutes to 1 hour

Activity Time

5 to 7 lessons

Topics

• variables
• variable expressions
• equations
• data analysis

Goals

• Students will have a conceptual understanding of the role of a variable in expressions and equations.
• Students will be able to interpret variable expressions and evaluate them for a given value of the variable.
• Students will be able to write variable expressions to describe a real life situation.
• Students will write and solve one variable equations.
• Students will describe dataa with measures of central tendency.

Materials

• 3 paper bags
• balls to bounce (2 or 3; tennis balls recommended)
• jump ropes (2 or 3)
• slips of paper and tape (one per student, may also use large sticky notes)
• stop watches or timers
• small white boards and dry erase markers
• linking cubes (10 per student)
• large chart paper
• manila paper
• markers
• student activity sheets - ''Variable Expression Charts'' - ''The Great Jump Rope Mysteries'' - ''Team Time'' - ''How Fast Can You Stack?''
• 3'' x 5'' cards labeled with variable expressions (one per student)
• 5'' x 8'' cards for students
• adding machine tape (optional)

Prerequisites

• order of operations

Credits

Authors

National Common Core Standards

5.MD.2	Make a line plot to display a data set of measurements in fractions of a unit (1/2, 1/4, 1/8). Use operations on fractions for this grade to solve problems involving information presented in line plots.
6.EE.2	Write, read, and evaluate expressions in which letters stand for numbers.
6.EE.3	Apply the properties of operations to generate equivalent expressions (distributive properties, and un/combining like terms).
6.EE.5	Understand solving an equation or inequality as a process for finding values that make a number sentence true.
6.EE.6	Use variables to represent numbers and write expressions when solving real-world or mathematical problems.
6.EE.7	Solve real-world and mathematical problems by writing and solving one-step linear equations with nonnegative rational numbers.
6.SP.2	Understand that a set of data collected to answer a statistical question has a distribution which can be described by its center, spread, and overall shape.
6.SP.3	Recognize that a measure of center for a numerical data set summarizes all of its values with a single number, while a measure of variation describes how its values vary with a single number.
6.SP.4	Display numerical data in plots on a number line, including dot plots, histograms, and box plots.
6.SP.5	Summarize numerical data sets in relation to their context.
7.EE.4	Use variables to represent quantities in a real-world or mathematical problem and construct simple equations and inequalities to solve problems.
7.SP.1	Understand that statistics can be used to gain information about a population by examining a sample of the population, and that generalizations about a population from a sample are only valid if the sample is representative of the population.
7.SP.2	Use data from a random sample to draw inferences about a population with an unknown characteristic of interest.

This work placed into the public domain by the Riverbend Community Math Center.