Algebra Algebra Algebra

Phew! That's what seems to be consuming my thoughts these days. I like teaching it for the 2nd year, and also I like that I know what's coming up on the horizon in the higher level math classes for the kids, so I can know what skills to focus on. For example, we just covered solving proportions, and I had some problems with the variable in the denominator. Well. The kids learned from 8th grade that you can just change the equation by taking the reciprocal of both sides and then solve.

So 12/5 = 7/x becomes 5/12 = x/7.

This is all well and good, and sometimes that's the simplest way to solve, but what if in algebra 2 or above you come across:

3x/(x+1) = (3x-2)/x.

Then "flipping" does not get you any closer to the answer.

Oh. Then someone mentioned "cross multiplying". Well, I didn't even want to go there because of all the misuse of that I've seen later on: OH! magically any time I see 2 fractions together involving variables whether or not there's an equal sign, I'm going to cross multiply without knowing why it works or even IF it works. Voila!

Anyway .... tons of algebra fun. I did have a discussion with my coworker, and she had this brilliant idea that I tried with solving absolute value equations ... but it can work with solving any equation. Write down the equation. On top of it, write numbers in circles in the order of operation of what would be done to x if you were to plug in a number. Then on the side I listed PEMDAS and the circled numbers in order and wrote in words what that was:
1. multiply by 3
2. subtract 4
3. take absolute value
4. add 10

Then under that sidebar, I wrote "to solve: undo in backwards order SADMEP"
4. subtract 10
3. 2 cases
2. add 4
1. divide by 3

Then the kids had a road map of what to do, and they didn't do weird things like get rid of stuff inside the absolute value symbols before taking care of them.