Solving Equations/Inequalities with Variables On One Side Graphic Organizers

We did six practice problems in our notebook over solving equations/inequalities with variables on one side. Students stapled these problems together and glued them on a single page. Some students even chose to staple their paper with the steps on top of the practice problems to condense things even further. I kinda like this approach!

At the end of our first unit, students were really struggling with translating between words and algebra. So, I decided to continue giving my students practice translating by giving them every single equation and inequality in WORDS instead of ALGEBRA. Was this the right decision? I’m not really sure. But, I can say that half way through this unit on solving equations/inequalities, my students started translating between words and algebra like bosses! The continued practice did end up paying off. What it prevented, however, was the chance to look at different types of application problems. I would like to combine these two approaches when I teach this again.

Here are close-ups of each:

Next time, I do want to make a few changes to this template. I want to switch around steps 7 and 8. By having my students check their solutions before they graphed them, some of my students became confused and started putting the results they got from checking their work on the number line instead of the solution they found.