math Grades 6 to 8 Live now

Expressions and Equations Grades 6 to 8

Expressions and Equations Grades 6 to 8 is a 12-week middle-school algebra course that uses only things a family already has: a wire coat hanger and two paper cups for a balance scale, dried beans or buttons, envelopes to hide a number, index cards, masking tape, a tape measure, graph paper and a timer. The crew runs the Puzzle Post, a weekly puzzle for the kids on their street, and every week's math makes a puzzle work. Students write and evaluate expressions with powers and variables, rewrite them in equivalent forms, keep a coat-hanger balance level to solve one-step and two-step equations, graph inequalities on a taped number line, feed a cardboard rule machine to see how one quantity depends on another, measure a ramp to find slope, compare linear functions in tables, graphs and rules, sort equations into one, none or infinitely many solutions, find where two lines meet, and write very large and very small numbers with powers of ten. Every answer is computed, every question is checked, and the course ends with a Puzzle Night the student runs for the family. Short daily lessons, a hands-on Puzzle Lab each week and a Saturday Puzzle Day. 100% free, start to finish.

• Write, read and evaluate expressions with whole-number exponents and variables, using the order of operations and the names of their parts
• Rewrite expressions in equivalent forms with the distributive property, combining like terms and factoring, and tell when two expressions are equivalent
• Solve one-step and two-step equations and inequalities by keeping both sides balanced, and graph the solutions of an inequality on a number line
• Use tables, graphs and equations to describe how a dependent quantity changes with an independent one, and read slope as a rate of change
• Compare linear functions given as tables, graphs, rules or descriptions, find their rate of change and initial value, and tell linear from nonlinear
• Solve linear equations with one, no or infinitely many solutions, find where two lines meet, and write very large and small numbers with powers of ten