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In this lesson, students will learn what a rational number is—a number that can be written as a ratio of two integers—and will practice identifying rational numbers and rewriting numbers as ratios of integers. Students will learn about terminating and repeating decimals (all are rationals) and can use long division to determine if a decimal is terminating or repeating.
Students learn about like terms and how to combine algebraic expressions with like terms using addition. We also cover subtracting with like terms and using the Distributive Property to multiply and factor with algebraic expressions. This lesson opens with a magic trick. The method behind the magic trick is the context of this lesson. Students can use what they learn in this lesson to understand the trick.
Students use an interactive balance to explore solving equations. This lesson can be used to introduce or to reinforce the idea of inverse operations. Students are introduced to the term coefficients and to the concept of solving equations (determining a value for the variable that makes the equation true, or balanced).
Module 2 Video
This video demonstrates an algebra magic trick. Participants are asked to start with the number of letters in their first name and then perform various operations on that number. The result, no matter what (positive) number you start with, is 10.