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 that is designed to reveal their current understanding and difficulties. You then review their work, and formulate questions for students to answer, to help them improve their solutions.
During the lesson, students work in pairs or threes to translate between word, symbol, table of values, and area representations of expressions.
In a whole-class discussion, students find different representations of expressions and explain their answers.
Finally, students return to their original assessment task, and try to improve their own responses.
To help you assess how well students are able to translate between words, symbols, tables, and area representations of algebraic expressions.
To help you to identify and support students who have difficulty in recognizing the order of algebraic operations.
To help you to identify and support students who have difficulty in recognizing equivalent expressions.
To help you to identify and support students who have difficulty in understanding the distributive laws of multiplication and division over addition (expansion of parentheses).