Systems of Equations Mystery Bags

The pre-testing crunch time is stressing out my poor Algebra I class.  After quite a miserable day on Tuesday, I knew I needed a different approach to our lesson for today.

I started the lesson with yet another example of a systems of linear equations word problem.  Cars and motorcycles were the topic for my male-heavy class.  I could see the boys' expressions change when it finally "clicked" for them since we were talking about a topic many of them care about.

Then I brought out the "mystery bags."  Outside each brown paper bag was a systems word problem.  Inside the bag was the answer to the question comprised of real objects that the kids could count out in many cases.  We worked through them as stations and the children found more success than they had been finding previously.  Hooray!

Here's a document with the problems we used and clipart of the answers.  For the candy, pencils, and yarn questions, I used real objects, but I've included the clip art for all of the questions.   Sorry if the pagination is a little off in this file.  You might need to add or delete some spaces to get the problems on their own pages.  Box isn't being friendly, but I know Word works better for most people than PDFs since you can edit as needed. 

Download here: https://app.box.com/s/muyaycbisot41wqa5l6j


Mathematically yours,
Miss B