LOL!!! Faythe is having a bit of difficulty with her pre-algebra. I had given her a worksheet that had her combining like terms, some using the distributive principle, ie: 3(2t+7)=80. Tonight I realized she was lost with it! So I'm trying to explain that you multiply 3 x 2t, and then 3 x 7, etc. No such luck. She couldn't understand why you didn't add the 2 and 7 to get 3 x 9t. Finally, I got a stroke of BRILLIANCE (which is extremely RARE for me, lol!) I told her that, say we had a barnyard. Well, our barnyard has 2 horses and 3 cows, so we'll write it 2h+3c. Now I want to multiply all the animals by 3. So we have 3(2h+3c). She could easily see that we have 6h+9c, and could understand that we can't really combine the horses and cows together, because they're different animals. Then it was easy to make the transfer to her equations! Who'd a thunk it, lol?
That is a very good example! I remember in chemistry I had a professor who explained stoichiometry using making sandwhiches as an example! She made it sound so easy! What program are you using? We had to skip like 12 lessons in TT pre-algebra because they were so redundant and you guys are already combining unlike terms!
exCELLENT! oop I am yelling here! Good job Jackie you get an A! I love using things they have knowledge of to get the idea across in math! SUPER DUPER!
I'm using a "retired" PS book, Merrill PreAlgebra: A Problem-Solving Approach. It's what I used with Rachael, and it's one I can work with. I found this great site for worksheets, btw: http://www.math.com/students/worksheet/algebra_sp.htm I have warned Carl that we will probably be going SLOW through this book; I think I might need about three days with the Distributive Principle and combing like terms, because it's so basic for everything else to come and she really needs to have it down instinctively!
we are doing SOS And I am not liking some ofthe ways they are playing with Babylonian numbers... does your book deal with those Jackie? I am studying his lesson prior to doing it with him because its a new looking concept to me, but it could just be because it looks different with me... differnt font can make it look like new stuff lol.
Very nice Jackie! This is an explanation I've never seen before, and something I might want to add to my course. I used some drawings to explain the distributive property (http://www.guidedcourses.com/mod/resource/view.php?id=35), but it was a lot of work and one student still didn't get it. So can I use it or is it copyrighted LOL.
Okay...I'm going to interject here. Excellent example on the distributive but it leaves you room to have murkyed up the representation of "t". Because "t" also represents a number. Can I expand on your example? In our barn, we have 2t+7 horses. The problem is, we don't know yet what "t" is. Maybe we have "t" number of stalls with 2 horses in each of them, plus another 7 horses out in the corral. We have 3 barns. Each of those barns has (2t+7) horses. Which is why we multiply (2t+7) times 3. If we just added 2 and 7, we wouldn't be accounting for all of the stalls, which we don't know how many there are. So we have to solve for 't' to figure out how many stalls are in each barn. ****** The only thing I worry about with your use of "2h+3c" is that you confuse the point of what the letter in an algebraic equation means. Like I said, you did an excellent job of communicating the distributive property! /math nerd
I understand what you're saying, Scottie! You're right; the variable is actually an UNKNOWN NUMBER in an equation. But my goal was to show why you couldn't combine them, and how when you multiplied, you had to multiply EACH ONE seperately. Math isn't her strong area, and I'm worried about what I'm going to have to come up with the NEXT time!
