My Algebra 1 students struggled with inequalities a lot more than I thought they would. When I taught this unit, I spent time solving one and two step inequalities before I jumped in to compound and absolute value inequalities. They thought the one and two step inequalities were super easy, so I feel like I wasted time and could have gone faster through those concepts. Now I know for next year…
Typically on review days, I do not have students add to their notebooks. However, I had two awesome pages that summarized everything they had learned. So, I had them add those two pages to their notebooks on the review day.
The first page was from Math=Love. I used this page exactly as she did. I didn’t insist that my students always write the variable first in the inequality. At the beginning of the unit, we talked about how “x > 5” is the same as “5 < x”. I want them to get used to seeing things both ways. So, step 2 on the “to-do list” wasn’t necessary.
Then, I used a page from Math Dyal. She’s been inspired by Doodle Notes and created this page for students to doodle and color as they worked through the problems. I liked the word problems that were included.
In Algebra 1, I’ve started including more pages where students write in practice problems. I’m loving it and I’m wondering why I stopped doing it earlier this year. Anyway, as I was working through the compound inequality practice problems that I had them include, I had an epiphany. Lots of my students were having trouble with the “and” inequalities. They were only adding/subtracting from two of the parts of the inequality. I had them write the inequalities separately, but it just felt strange. So, I drew columns with a highlighter. I explained that they had to add/subtract to EVERY part of the inequality. The columns helped them see the three distinct parts so much better. Next year, I’m going to start out explaining it this way.
