8th Grade—6: Perform operations with numbers expressed in scientific notation, including problems where both decimal and scientific notation are used. Use scientific notation and choose units of appropriate size for measurements of very large or very small quantities (e.g., use millimeters per year for seafloor spreading). Interpret scientific notation that has been generated by technology. (8-EE4) Teacher Note: Students must be able to add, subtract, multiply and divide numbers expressed in scientific notation. The following activity can be used to enhance your teacher led instruction: Operations with Numbers in Scientific Notation Using real-world examples, students add, subtract, multiply and divide numbers written in scientific notation. Teacher Led lesson: Scientific Notation in Context (2 days) Alabama College and Career Ready Standards 8th Grade—6: Perform operations with numbers expressed in scientific notation, including problems where both decimal and scientific notation are used. Use scientific notation and choose units of appropriate size for measurements of very large or very small quantities (e.g., use millimeters per year for seafloor spreading). Interpret scientific notation that has been generated by technology. [8-EE4] Teacher Note: Students need to be able to use scientific notation in the context of using units to report very large and very small quantities. The following activity can be used to enhance your teacher led instruction: IM - Choosing Appropriate Units - provides students with 4 real-world problem scenarios. Students write numbers in decimal form and scientific and then choose appropriate units to report quantities. IM - Giant Burgers - task that has students using operations with numbers in scientific notation to prove a newspaper headline is true. Presentation Strategy: These formative assessment activities can be done in small groups or with a partner. Have student groups present their problem solving strategies and solutions.
Teacher Led Instruction: Matching Equations and Real-World Scenarios (1 day) Alabama College and Career Ready Standards 8th Grade – 9: Solve equations in one variable. [8-EE7] Give examples of linear equations in one variable with one solution, infinitely many solutions, or no solutions. Show which of these possibilities is the case by successively transforming the given equation into simpler forms until an equivalent equation of the form x = a, a = a, or a = b results (where a and b are different numbers). [8-EE7a] Solve linear equations with rational number coefficients, including equations whose solutions require expanding expressions, using the distributive property and collecting like terms. [8-EE7b] Prerequisites: Students should be able to solve multi-step equations in one variable. Teacher Note: Now that students have learned how to solve multi-step equations, they need to begin to connect those equations to real-world situations. Students need practice matching equations to scenarios so that they can be asked in future units to generate these equations themselves. The following activities can be used to enhance your teacher led instruction: Matching Equations and Real-World Scenarios This worksheet gives eight equations that all use the same numbers, as well as six scenarios. Students can match each scenario with an equation and then solve each equation. Presentation Strategy: Introduce this lesson by discussing that the equations students have solved all week can represent real-world situations. Then give students the worksheet and ask them to match each scenario to an equation. Some of the equations are harder to match than others, and some scenarios are challenging to parse if students are used to using key words to solve word problems rather than trying to comprehend the meaning of the scenario. As students work through the problems, they may feel unsure of the equation they’ve chosen. You may ask the students to solve the equation they’ve chosen and then see if the value they get makes sense in the context of the situation. This helps to make the connection that the equation represents the scenario, so its solution should tell the student something important about the scenario. Since there are two extra equations that do not match to scenarios, you may include an extension where students write scenarios to match each of those equations.