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. You then review their responses and create questions for students to consider when improving their work.
After a whole-class discussion that introduces the charge model for directed numbers, students work in small groups on two collaborative discussion tasks in which they match diagrams with calculations and produce missing diagrams for the remaining calculations.
In a whole-class discussion, students discuss what they have learned.
Finally, students revisit their initial work on the assessment task and work alone on a similar task to the introductory task.