Lesson 23

Students will answer questions about similar situations in their Algebra 1 class, and later in this lesson. The contexts of bank accounts and insurance purchases may be unfamiliar to students, especially English learners and students whose communities are not well served by banks or whose families do not have cars or other insurance policies.

By engaging with this explicit prompt to take a step back and become familiar with a context and the mathematics that might be involved, students are making sense of problems (MP1).

Tell students that their job is to think of at least one thing they notice and at least one thing they wonder. Display the situations for all to see. Display each situation one at a time. For each situation, give students 1 minute of quiet think time, and then 1 minute to discuss the things they notice with their partner, followed by a whole-class discussion.

Ask students to share the things they noticed and wondered. Record and display their responses for all to see. If possible, record the relevant reasoning on or near the situation. After all responses have been recorded without commentary or editing, ask students, “Is there anything on this list that you are wondering about?” Encourage students to respectfully disagree, ask for clarification, or point out contradicting information. If new vocabulary or connections or lack of connections with the situation don’t come up, here are some possible questions for discussion:

• What is the difference between a checking account and a savings account?
• Can Jada put some money in each account or does she have to choose one?
• What do you know about car insurance? What does it mean to sell car insurance?
• Why might a car insurance company sell cheap and expensive policies?
• I was wondering what “valuing over $400,000 total” means. Does anyone have any ideas?

The mathematical purpose of this activity is to introduce a specific strategy that students can use to write inequalities that describe a given situation, using their skill at finding specific values that satisfy a real-life situation.

Using a mix of structuring students’ thinking using tables, and teacher demonstration, students encounter a strategy for recording their thinking in a way that facilitates spotting patterns in the calculations and using patterns to generalize an equation.

This strategy will be useful if students are struggling to write equations based on situations in the associated Algebra 1 lesson.

Monitor for students who record their work in a way that makes it easy to spot patterns.

Display Jada’s bank account situation for all to see: “Jada received \$100 on her birthday. She has a savings account and a checking account that she can deposit the money in.” Ask students, “What are some amounts of money Jada could deposit into each account?” (Sample responses: \$50 in each account, \$20 in one account and \$60 in the other and keep \$20 in cash, \$100 into one account and \$0 in the other, or other valid distrubutions.)

Ask students:

• “What would we have to check to be sure those totals worked in the story?” (They have to add up to no more than \$100.)
• “What are the quantities in the problem that we are testing?” (Amount deposited in checking and amount deposited in savings.)

Create a table with 4 rows and 4 columns as shown here for all to see. Label the columns in the table based on students’ names for the quantities. Begin to complete the table with some of students’ suggestions. Ask students what calculations they are doing with their guesses in order to make sure they work. Then ask students what they are doing to check that their guess works in the story. If needed, check in with students about whether less than or greater than makes sense, and whether strictly less than or less than and equal to makes more sense in the story. Finally, ask students if Jada deposited \(x\) dollars in checking and \(y\)\(\)  dollars in savings, how they could fill out the table. A possible completed table may look like this.

amount deposited in checking	amount deposited in savings	calculation	check
\$50	\$50	\$50 + \$50	\$50 + \$50 \(\leq\) \$100 true
\$20	\$60	\$20 + \$60	\$20 + \$60 \(\leq\) \$100 true
\(x\)	\(y\)	\(x + y\)	\(x + y \leq 100\)

Ask students, “What are some ways we could check that \(x + y \leq 100\) matches the original situation?” (Read the situation again, check that the guesses that worked with the situation also worked with the story.)

Ask previously identified students to share their tables. Ask students, “How did making the table help you spot patterns?” (By seeing the patterns in the calculation before the value is determined, we can notice what is the same and what is different in the situations.)

Explain that this strategy of trying some specific values and looking for patterns is a strategy used by mathematicians all the time.

In this activity, students get a chance to practice applying their skills in representing situations symbolically and finding and interpreting solutions.

The structure of a row game supports students to check their thinking because their partners should get the same answer to different questions. When student answers don't match, they must make sense of each other’s questions and reasoning to figure out a correct solution.

The practice will pay off when they model situations with inequalities in their Algebra 1 lessons.

Students will work independently to complete their designated rows, and will work with their partners in the event that an answer is wrong or different from their partner’s answer.

Remind students that partner A completes only set A, and partner B completes only set B. Your answers in each question should match. Work on one question at a time and check whether your answer matches your partner’s before moving on. If you don’t get the same answer, work together to find your mistake.

The purpose of the discussion is to determine how students write inequalities from situations and find ordered pairs that work in the situations.

Consider asking:

• "How did you think of ordered pairs that work in your situation? Were you surprised that they worked for your partner's situation?" (I tried to come up with a reasonable value for the \(x\)-variable and then see what \(y\)-variables might fit the constraints. It was not too surprising since the context was different, but the values were very similar.)
• "How did you determine which direction the inequality should go?" (I thought about the constraint and whether they would be ok if they went over or under the target amount. If they could go over a certain amount, I used a greater than symbol. If they had to stay under a certain amount, I used a less than symbol.)
• "How can you determine whether an equation or inequality describes the situation better?" (An equation is best when a target value must be reached exactly. An inequality makes sense when there is a limiting value that someone must stay under or over.)