Standard 3: Linear Equations and InequalitiesArchived

In this timed activity, students solve linear equations (one- and two-step) or quadratic equations of varying difficulty depending on the initial conditions they select. This activity allows students to practice solving equations while the activity records their score, so they can track their progress. This activity includes supplemental materials, including background information about the topics covered, a description of how to use the application, and exploration questions for use with the java applet.

Type: Educational Game

Students use data collection from their spaghetti bridge activity to write linear equations, graph the data, and interpret the data.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will explore how percentages, proportions, and solving for unknowns are used in important jobs. This interactive activity will open their minds and address the question, "When is this ever used in real life?"

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson unit is intended to help you assess how well students are able to:

• Solve linear equations in one variable with rational number coefficients.
• Collect like terms.
• Expand expressions using the distributive property.
• Categorize linear equations in one variable as having one, none, or infinitely many solutions.

It also aims to encourage discussion on some common misconceptions about algebra.

Type: Lesson Plan

This learning video is designed to develop critical thinking in students by encouraging them to work from basic principals to solve a puzzling mathematics problem that contains uncertainty. One class session of approximately 55 minutes is necessary for lesson completion. First-year simple algebra is all that is required for the lesson, and any high school student in a college-preparatory math class should be able to participate in this exercise. Materials for in-class activities include: a yard stick, a meter stick or a straight branch of a tree; a saw or equivalent to cut the stick; and a blackboard or equivalent. In this video lesson, during in-class sessions between video segments, students will learn among other things: 1) how to generate random numbers; 2) how to deal with probability; and 3) how to construct and draw portions of the X-Y plane that satisfy linear inequalities.

Type: Problem-Solving Task

In this activity students are challenged to model a decay function by collecting data from a few trials, graphing the data, and then drawing a curve of best fit. The student must decide which of the equations best fits his/her data.

Type: Problem-Solving Task

Students design an experiment to model a leaky faucet and determine the amount of water wasted due to the leak. Using the data they gather in a table, students graph and write an equation for a line of best fit. Students then use their derived equation to make predictions about the amount of water that would be wasted from one leak over a long period of time or the amount wasted by several leaks during a specific time period.

Type: Problem-Solving Task

This professional development resource provides a rich collection of information to help teachers engage students more effectively in mathematical modeling. It features videos of two complete lessons with commentary, background information on effective teaching, modeling, and lesson study, full lesson plans to teach both example lessons, examples of student work from the lessons, tips for effective teaching strategies, and list of helpful resources.

• In Lesson 1 students use mathematical models (tables and equations) to represent the relationship between the number of revolutions made by a "driver" and a "follower" (two connected gears in a system), and they will explain the significance of the radii of the gears in regard to this relationship.

• In Lesson 2 students mathematically model the growth of populations and use exponential functions to represent that growth.

Type: Professional Development

"Lesson 1 of two lessons teaches students about direct variation by allowing them to explore a simulated oil spill using toilet paper tissues (to represent land) and drops of vegetable oil (to simulate a volume of oil). Lesson 2 teaches students about inverse variation by exploring the relationship between the heights of a fixed amount of water poured into cylindrical containers of different sizes as compared to the area of the containers' bases." from Insights into Algebra 1 - Annenberg Foundation.

Type: Unit/Lesson Sequence

This video demonstrates the substitution method to solve a system of equations, that there is no solution, and that the graphs of the equations are parallel.

Type: Video/Audio/Animation

This video shows how to determine which lines are parallel from a set of three different equations.

Type: Video/Audio/Animation

This video illustrates how to determine if the graphs of a given set of equations are parallel.

Type: Video/Audio/Animation

This video describes how to determine the equation of a line that is perpendicular to another line. All that is given initially the equation of a line and an ordered pair from the other line.

Type: Video/Audio/Animation

This video takes a look at rearranging a formula to highlight a quantity of interest.

Type: Video/Audio/Animation

This video demonstrates writing a function that represents a real-life scenario.

Type: Video/Audio/Animation

Khan Academy video tutorial on graphing linear equations: "Algebra: Graphing Lines 1"

Type: Video/Audio/Animation

Khan Academy tutorial video that demonstrates with real-world data the use of Excel spreadsheet to fit a line to data and make predictions using that line.

Type: Video/Audio/Animation

A time-lapse video showing differential growth rates for touch-treated seedlings and control seedlings. This would be appropriate for lessons about plant growth responses to environmental stress and graphing growth rate. Plants were grown in a vermiculite soilless medium with calcium-enhanced water. No other minerals or nutrients were used. Plants were grown in a dark room with specially-filtered green light. The plants did not grow by cellular reproduction but only by expansion of existing cells in the hypocotyl region below the 'hook'.
Video contains three plants in total. The first two plants to emerge from the vermiculite medium are the control (right) and treatment (left) plants. A third plant emerges in front of these two but is removed at the time of treatment and is not relevant except to help indicate when treatment was applied (watch for when it disappears). When that plant disappears, the slowed growth rate of the treatment plant is apparent.
Treatment included a gentle flexing of the hypocotyl region of the treatment seedling for approximately 5 seconds. A rubber glove was used at this time to avoid an contamination of the plant tissue.
Some video players allow users to 'scrub' the playback back and forth. This would help teachers or students isolate particular times (as indicated by the watch) and particular measurements (as indicated by the cm scale). A graph could be constructed by first creating a data table and then plotting the data points from the table. Multiple measurements from the video could be taken to create an accurate graph of the plants' growth rates (treatment vs control).
Instructions for graphing usage:
The scale in the video is in centimeters (one cm increments). Students could observe the initial time on the watch in the video and use that observation to represent time (t) = 0. For that value, a mark could be made to indicate the height of the seedlings. As they advance and pause the video repeatedly, the students would mark the time (+2.5 hours for example) and mark the related seedling heights. It is not necessary to advance the video at any regular interval but is necessary to mark the time and related heights as accurately as possible. Students may use different time values and would thus have different data sets but should find that their graphs are very similar. (Good opportunity to collect data from real research and create their own data sets) It is advised that the students collect multiple data points around the time where the seedling growth slows in response to touch to more accurately collect information around that growth rate slowing event. The resulting graph should have an initial growth rate slope, a flatter slope after stress treatment, and a return to approximately the same slope as seen pre-treatment. More data points should yield a more thorough view of this. This would be a good point to discuss. Students can use some of their data points to calculate approximate pre-treatment, immediate post-treatment, and late post-treatment slopes for both the control and treatment seedlings.
This video was created by the submitter and is original content.
Full screen playback should be an option for most video players. Video quality may appear degraded with a larger image but this may aid viewing the watch and scale for data collection.

Type: Video/Audio/Animation