Equality Possibilities Task Template, Student Version of Task, Anchor Pages and Scoring Rationale

This resource is a remix from Illustrative Mathematics (https://goopenva.org/courses/3-md-how-heavy). This resource encourages student collaboration and allows students to have a mathematical dialogue as express their understanding of units of measure. Teachers can use objects found around the house to demonstrate mathematics in the real world. I like how this resource adds flexibility in instruction, as it allows teachers to creatively add diverse manipulatives or real-life items on the balance scale. This activity scaffolds the learning process allowing students an opportunity to experience active hands-on learning to strengthen their understanding of mathematical concepts, which provides a diverse learning experience. This resource is a valuable part of building background when introducing units of measure or equations in the early elementary years of mathematics education as it provides students a concrete example of building an equation with concrete objects.  Suggested Modification - A student recording sheet with illustrations has been added to the resource to allow all different types of learner to learn from a concrete idea to strengthen conceptual learning about building an equation. 

The students will work with a partner or small group to design a program to move a “student” through a classroom with obstacles.  Their job is to find the most efficient sequence of actions for them to get to the cafeteria from the classroom. The student will be a paper avatar.  The classroom will be a 8 by 8 grid with pictures of obstacles the student must move through to get to different destinations.  The students will try to move through with the least number of steps.  As an extension, they can rename a loop of multiple steps, and it will become one step.

Using reasoning to assess the equality in closed and open arithmetic equations. Mathematics Instructional Plans (MIPs) help teachers align instruction with the Mathematics Standards of Learning (SOL) by providing examples of how the knowledge, skills and processes found in the SOL and curriculum framework can be presented to students in the classroom.

This video is part of the Continue to Know with WHRO TV series. Watch Kyle Snyder teach about equations.