Week 1: One Good Thing: "What? Do you think I'm a math person?!"

During our warm up the other day, the students were presented with this:


While I was observing the students working, I asked one about 4x=32.  He told me the correct answer and I then asked how he got that.

Well, I know that four times eight is 48.
Makes sense.  What if you had something that looks like 4x=44?
11
Why?
Four times 11 is 44
Ok, how about 4x=72?
<Working on the calculator> 18!
How do you know?
Four times 18 is 72
Ok, how about 4x=244?
What?!  Do you think I'm some sort of math person!?

Yes! He had the headache and wanted aspirin!  We then talked about how he solved the addition and subtraction problems above.  He said that he did the opposite of whatever the problem was asking.  I asked him what's the opposite of multiplication and he told it was dividing.   He used his calculator and did four divided by 244.  He thankfully realized that .016 is incorrect, so he did it the other way around and got 61.  We did another problem to see if it worked again and it did.  He felt very satisfied and proud of his work.  The lightbulb turned on and he finally understands one-step equations.

Welcome to the Math Person Club!