Reply To: Lesson 4 – Applying Our Understanding Of The Unit Of Measure – Discussion

[Nathan Vaillancourt]

Over the past couple of years it seems I’ve been using unitizing language when talking about like terms. Rather than saying something like “4x plus 2x” I’ve been making a conscious effort to instead same something like “4 x’s plus 2 x’s”. It’s made a huge difference when I look at how few students will now write 4x+2x=6x^2. I always tell them just like you can’t add apples and oranges together, you can’t add apples to apples and get oranges.

[Nathan Vaillancourt]

Over the past couple of years it seems I’ve been using unitizing language when talking about like terms. Rather than saying something like “4x plus 2x” I’ve been making a conscious effort to instead same something like “4 x’s plus 2 x’s”. It’s made a huge difference when I look at how few students will now write 4x+2x=6x^2. I always tell them just like you can’t add apples and oranges together, you can’t add apples to apples and get oranges.