Today in my remedial algebra class, I thought I would make an inequalities game. I had this great idea that I would put up on the board a whole bunch of inequalities, and each group would add or subtract or multiply or divide different things to these inequalities, and we would see if the result came out still true, or false.

(For example, it’s true that 2 < 4, and if you add 5 to both sides of this, you get a still true statement, 7 < 9, or if you multiply both sides by 2, it’s still true, 4 < 8, BUT, if you multiply both sides by a negative number, like -2, it’s not still true:   -4 < -8 is NOT true. Which leads to rules about how you solve inequalities.)

So… the first problem was that only about a third of the class was there on time…. So I went over inequalities and how to graph them for a bit first, vamping…..

Once more students had arrived, I put them in 6 groups, and put 6 TRUE inequalities on the board, like this:

Group 1: 2 < 4         Group 2: 5 < 8       Group 3: -2 < 5   etc.

I was going to ask each group to do different things to their inequality — one group would add a number to both sides, another would multiply both sides by a number AND ONE GROUP would multiply both sides by a negative, and they would be the mystery group where it would turn out that this gives a false result!!

HA.

Never under estimate the degree to which following directions is difficult, especially in a remedial class. I put the problems up for each group and I could tell pretty quickly that most students were baffled.

SO… I had them all do more or less the same thing each round — first I had them all add or subtract the same number to both side of the inequality, then we discussed it, then I had each group multiply both sides of their inequality by 2, and we discussed it… and then I had each multiply by -2, and we discussed it.  The last one — multiplying both sides by a negative — results in a statement that is NOT TRUE.

And then we went over the results: adding or subtracting by the same number — results in a true statement. Multiplying by a positive, results in a true statement.  Multiplying by a negative number…NO! The statement turns out false… this lead us to how to solve inequalities.

Well, so the game failed… but the experiment worked out! They were asking questions, arguing with me, protesting, working problems, THINKING. It was pretty awesome, actually. Good class!

I often have trouble thinking of meaningful games to play in my remedial algebra class. These are the students who are most disengaged with traditional teaching, but they are often also the hardest to play games with … the same things that made them not-so great students, make them not-so great at listening to the rules of a game, or at playing it correctly without supervision.

But last class they had to do some tough solving of equations with fractions, and then today there was a quiz at the end of class… they looked so bored, and so unengaged. I had to try to think of something out of the ordinary to do to lift their spirits a bit.

We were doing the intro to translating word problems into algebra, and instead of putting up a table of all the operations and “key words,” I made it into a game.

I put up “addition” and in groups, they had to think of as many words as they could that tell you in a word problem that there is going to be addition. They got 1 point for everything they thought of that I said yes to and *two* points if they thought of one no other group had. Then we did subtraction, then we did multiplication, then division. I played against the class for multiplication, convinced that none of them would think of  “product” and”double” and “triple,” but I was beat out my two of the groups who thought of those and more.

Then we did the usual “Three more than twice a number is 13” and they had to translate that, and they were much more into it!

At the end of class, when when they had to take the quiz on solving, they did much better than usual. I like to think that being in a good frame of mind helped.