Graphic Organizer: Solving Simple Equations

Reviewing some old papers and I found the following Graphic Organizer. Those were big that year, after they were stressed in a PD. I tried to make things a little more visual, even if it was only a flowchart with boxes and lines. Better than fill-in-the-blank problems, right?

Oddly enough, my initial thought for this sheet was to NOT have the students place the solutions in the final column. I felt that the actual solution was secondary to getting the solution. Or should I say "knowing how to get the solution"? However, students do like answering problems, even if they leave out all the steps in between. The first weeks I need to break them of bad habits, and drill into them the idea that it's not about WHAT the answer is as much as HOW you arrived at that answer and WHY it's correct.

Algebra is moving beyond Arithmetic. That's why we'll give you a calculator (or let you use your own) to do the arithmetic for you.