Tuesday, St. Patrick's Day

 Assignment: Real Life Negatives A

Due: Wednesday, March 18

We are delving into negatives now, but just beginning. You will notice that I take a different approach to this, starting with thinking about the concept of what a negative is, and recognizing how much they already know about negatives while probably not understanding the equations. 

So, focus on the understandings. Our work with coordinate grids are meant to introduce what you can do with a coordinate grid. Yesterday's homework was just a simple plotting exercise, but thinking about how they represent negatives is pretty cool. Understanding how they work for plotting complex equations is big stuff, but just getting more exposure is our goal for now. 

As for "real life" negatives, the stories are fun and allow me to use ridiculous scenarios to see a variety of numbers that they will be using to make sense of the questions. Do I need to know that 2 + (-5) = -3, or can I just tell you that if I go up 2 stairs and down 5, I will be lower than I was when I started? See, they can do that. Learning the equations without context is the hard part. We'll get there. 

And one more thing: they should be using the commutative and associative properties for organizing their work. Please don't have them number-line hop, as in 3 - 5 + 9 - 20 + 4. It's a recipe for mistakes, especially when we throw decimals into the equation. 

*Do note there was a pre-algebra option tonight for anyone who wanted to write an equation, then commute and associate to reach the answer. 

So how can you help? 

Focus on understanding the situations. For example, if the temperature is 20 below zero and only rises 12 degrees, it still won't be over 0 degrees, so it's still below zero (negative). Have them make sure their answer makes sense! One of the 8th graders told me today that she remembers wondering why commuting the numbers worked, but now it makes sense, especially when you add in variables that need commuting and associating too!

Words to use: Difference (find the difference of the numbers, not "subtraction") and Value (will the answer have a positive or negative value?)