In case you are trying the MARS MAP Classroom Challenges for the first time, it is recommended that you read the Brief Guide for teachers and administrators before you get started.
Before the lesson, students work individually on an assessment task designed to reveal their current understanding and difficulties. You then review their responses and create questions for students to consider when improving their work.
After a whole-class introduction, students work collaboratively on a card matching activity.
Towards the end of the lesson there is a whole-class discussion.
In a follow-up lesson, students work alone on a similar task to the introductory assessment task.
To help you assess how well students are able to perform arithmetic operations, including those involving whole-number exponents, recognizing and applying the conventional order of operations.
To help you assess how well students are able to write and evaluate numerical expressions from diagrammatic representations and be able to identify equivalent expressions.
To help you assess how well students are able to apply the distributive and commutative properties appropriately.
To help you assess how well students are able to use the method for finding areas of compound rectangles.