| | |

Solving Equations Flowchart Foldable

I discovered this solving equations flowchart foldable when I still had some students who were getting their steps out of order when trying to solve equations. I downloaded this foldable from In Stillness the Dancing. I had my Algebra 1 students glue it in our interactive notebooks.

I referred to this as our flippy, flappy, foldy thing.  I think this was one of our most-used foldables of the year so far.  Our special education teacher loved it, too.  I guess the reason why I love this so much is that it takes students step by step through the process of solving an equation.  

solving equations flowchart foldable flow chart algebra interactive notebooks math inbs
solving equations flowchart foldable flow chart algebra interactive notebooks math inbs

These are the same questions I would be asking a student if I was sitting by them and helping them.  By giving all of my students this tool and modeling how it works, I am equipping my students to help themselves.  (And, yes, my students remarked that I was WAY TOO happy about this foldable.)

solving equations flowchart foldable flow chart algebra interactive notebooks math inbs

Link to Download Solving Equations Flowchart Foldable

Download

Sarah Carter teaches high school math in her hometown of Coweta, Oklahoma. She currently teaches AP Precalculus, AP Calculus AB, and Statistics. She is passionate about sharing creative and hands-on teaching ideas with math teachers around the world through her blog, Math = Love.

Similar Posts

48 Comments

  1. I wish I was as cool as you about putting up all my stuff! It's barely enough to keep up with creating things and passing them out to my kids! You are fabulous!

    1. Thanks! It's time consuming, but it's definitely worth it! I've gotten so much constructive feedback.

  5. Great ideas! I am going to share them with my colleagues. Thanks for taking the time to share. You are awesome!

  6. Impressive work! Thanks for posting the examples. This will be helpful in the midst of my algebra unit.

  7. How do you make time for your notebook, I want to do one so badly, I believe it would help my students but I don't seem to have time. We are suppose to be teaching very quickly. I'm a first year teacher and any advice would be great.

    1. Finding time for the notebook can definitely be a struggle. There are some units where I do a better job of this than others. What you can't see from my blog is the number of things that we do that just never make it into our notebooks. Students will want to go reference things later on, and I have to apologize because I ran out of time for us to make notebook pages for them. This is something I'm getting much better at with time. One day, I hope for notebooks to be a complete representation of everything my students learn over the course of a year. But, they definitely started as just a way to capture the highlights of the year.

      My advice would be to just start and see what happens. Then, next year fix what didn't work and try again. Repeat. Forever. 🙂

  8. I love your method of solving equations. However, if I have the equation of 1/(2x)=5 where you have to solve for x, how would you use this method then? I tried to figure it out, but couldn't. I would love to know how you would approach to this problem when given such problem. Thank you so much!

    1. I would have students take the reciprocal of both sides of the equation first. This would put x in the numerator, and you should be able to proceed more easily from here. Hope this helps!

    2. Instead of taking the reciprocal, I taught my students that whenever there is a fraction in an equation and you don't like having a fraction (either because you need to isolate a variable or because you just don't love fractions!) 1) identify the denominator 2) multiply through by the denominator.
      Some of them are ready to proceed to the next level, using the reciprocal to cancel both parts of the fraction at once; but not everybody will really absorb that [YET]. 'Denominator' is easily accessible and I think easier to remember for keeps.

  9. You are amazing! Thank you for sharing so many of your ideas! Because of you I am going to try Interactive Notebooks with my Algebra 1 class next year! I can't wait!

    1. Thanks Amanda!!! You'll have to let me know how it goes. Maybe even blog about it… 😉

  10. Hi Sarah! When you get a chance, can you please send me these documents? For some reason I can't open them. I am teaching summer school this year and I'm using the notebooks. My kids LOVE them and say they're really helpful! Yay! My e-mail is tamckeon1992[at]gmail.com

    Thank you!!!

    1. Done 🙂 Glad to hear you're having great success with the notebooks!

  11. You are so great! Looking at this site makes me excited to start the school year!

  12. Wow, these are some amazing ideas!! Thank you! I can't wait to try them, I think it will be really helpful for my students.

  13. I am new to 8th grade math this year and am so glad to find your site. I am sure you will be a calming source through this first year! Thank you!!!

  16. Thank you so much, I have looked at your blog for a long time now and just today used my own variation of the Frayer and Inverse – you also inspired me to do my own little chart with expression vs equation as we transitioned chapters, thanks!!

  18. I love these charts and need to try something new for reteaching these topics because my students don't understand it. Thank you for sharing these ideas!

  19. I love love this for my 5th graders with the multiple operations. I have some who are so confused, this will help tremendously!

  20. Thank you so much for sharing! Love the table of contents and have used it for every chapter(unit) this year. I also put one in the front of the Interactive Notebook as a table of contents for the entire Interactive notebook. Love the solving equations foldable. A colleague shared that at one of our math meetings. This is my first year with interactive notebooks and I absolutely love them. I read blogs,including yours, for about 1/2 of last year, and over the summer knowing I would be working with interactive notebooks this year. I have three preps and this can be done. It is challenging keeping up with this and making new pages. I just tell myself it will be easier next year because I will just be tweaking what I am doing now. One thing I suggest for those new to this is make as many pages as you can over the summer. I also use Pinterest and I categorized each of my pins by topic such as geometry, linear equations…. which helps now that the school year is rolling, makes it so much easier to find by topic in my own boards. Thanks again for sharing and blogging.

Comments are closed.