Description
What our Numerical Expressions lesson plan includes
Lesson Objectives and Overview: Numerical Expressions teaches students all about numerical expressions, including how to translate them. At the end of the lesson, students will be able to translate simple expressions that record calculations without evaluating them. This lesson is for students in 5th grade.
Classroom Procedure
Every lesson plan provides you with a classroom procedure page that outlines a step-by-step guide to follow. You do not have to follow the guide exactly. The guide helps you organize the lesson and details when to hand out worksheets. It also lists information in the blue box that you might find useful. You will find the lesson objectives, state standards, and number of class sessions the lesson should take to complete in this area. In addition, it describes the supplies you will need as well as what and how you need to prepare beforehand.
Options for Lesson
Included with this lesson is an “Options for Lesson” section that lists a number of suggestions for activities to add to the lesson or substitutions for the ones already in the lesson. If you have more advanced students, you can have them begin to use a fraction bar instead of the division symbol. An optional addition to this lesson is to have your students create their own statements to translate with numbers less than a set amount. You could also teach this lesson in conjunction with other lessons on translating algebraic and written mathematical expressions, equations, and inequalities.
Teacher Notes
The teacher notes page includes a paragraph with additional guidelines and things to think about as you begin to plan your lesson. This page also includes lines that you can use to add your own notes as you’re preparing for this lesson.
NUMERICAL EXPRESSIONS LESSON PLAN CONTENT PAGES
Numerical Expressions
The Numerical Expressions lesson plan includes one content page. People often use symbols to represent words or ideas. For example, you might use an emoji to convey your feelings in a text message. In math, however, symbols represent numbers and operations. For example, the symbol “3” represents the word “three” and the symbol “+” represents the work “plus” or “addition.”
In math, it’s very helpful to learn how to move back and forth between the written and symbolic. The lesson includes a few examples.
How would you write “The product of 3 and 7” with symbols? The answer is 3 * 7. The word “product” tells you that this is a multiplication problem.
Let’s make it a little more complicated by adding a second operation. How would you write “The product of 3 and 7 and then subtract 2” with symbols? The first part is the same as the original example: 3 * 7. When you add the second part (“subtract 2”), you need to make sure to include parentheses: (3 * 7) – 2. This is important because this is how you are supposed to solve the problem. Writing it without the parentheses would be incorrect due to the order of operations.
The lesson closes with a few more examples. When writing numerical expressions, there might be many ways to use the symbols correctly, especially when working with multiplication and division. Always remember to use parenthesis to show which piece is calculated first in the problem!
NUMERICAL EXPRESSIONS LESSON PLAN WORKSHEETS
The Numerical Expressions lesson plan includes three worksheets: an activity worksheet, a practice worksheet, and a homework assignment. You can refer to the guide on the classroom procedure page to determine when to hand out each worksheet.
NUMBER SENTENCES ACTIVITY WORKSHEET
For the activity worksheet, students will find classmates who can write each number sentence shown on the worksheet. Each classmate will write their name next to the number sentence they wrote.
SYMBOLS PRACTICE WORKSHEET
The practice worksheet asks students to write each number sentence on the worksheet using symbols.
NUMERICAL EXPRESSIONS HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT
Like the practice worksheet, the homework assignment asks students to write each number sentence on the worksheet using symbols.
Worksheet Answer Keys
This lesson plan includes answer keys for the activity worksheet, the practice worksheet, and the homework assignment. If you choose to administer the lesson pages to your students via PDF, you will need to save a new file that omits these pages. Otherwise, you can simply print out the applicable pages and keep these as reference for yourself when grading assignments.
