Cutting and Pasting 101...

Well, over the last two weeks I've learned that my 8th graders have forgotten how to cut and paste from kindergarten.  We made an accordion foldable for using substitution to solve a system of equations.  I anticipated that it would take 15 minutes to assemble and then 15 minutes to go through.  Hmm...that was really good in theory.  The assembly took 30 minutes.  So, I'm revamping this one for next year.

It helped the kids to understand substitution and it was nice that they could view two steps at a time.  The kids seemed to like that about the accordion style.  You can take a look at what it looked like below.  It takes two pieces of paper to get all of the steps down.  Next year, I think I will turn it into a chart.  Most likely will be faster to complete.  However, if kids are making them all year, then it might be a lot faster.  I only started doing this with 8th grade this past trimester.

The cover says "Steps for Solving Systems of Equations by Substitution"

The steps are down the left hand side and then an example is down the right hand side.  Next year, I will have 2 examples.  One will be like y= 2x-3 and y=5x+9 and the other will be like 3x+2y=10 and 4x-5y=13.

   A few days later, we made foldables for elimination by addition and subtraction and by multiplication.  We waited a few days because my school uses Saxon.  So they had other lessons on other topics in between the substitution and elimination lessons.  These foldables went a little faster, but I had the charts cut out and and booklets put together.  I only have 30 kids, so it wasn't so bad to do.  This format seemed a lot better for the kiddos.  So I am keeping that in mind for the future.

Here is what that foldable looked like.

The two columns are labeled "Addition Example" and "Subtraction Example".  The steps on the left I made using Creately.

The two columns on the chart are labeled " Multiply 1 Equation" and "Multiply 2 Equations".  Again, the steps were made using Creately.

Here are the files for the different foldables that are pictured here.