Balancing Act

Choosing the operations to make the equation balance

A key feature of the Aurstralian Curriculum: Mathematics is the early introduction of expressions with mixed operations. Fluency with working out the value of a numerical expression is a great way into becoming confident with algebraic expressions. By bringing this topic forward students should be well prepared for the algebra shock that awaits. Balancing Act is our contribution to this topic. The program sets challenges that we have found really do encourage the application of mental strategies as well as giving familarity with numerical expressions.

This program is aimed at the top end of Primary and expects that students will be comfortable arithmetic to 100 as well as dealing with the negative numbers that occur occasionally in the expressions.

Developing the use of mental strategies

Pencil and paper should not be needed to solve the challenges that the iPad generates. It is, however, important to have a range of mental strategies that can be used to check out ideas and to support the logical reasoning that the solution paths often require.

In this example, the 7 and 3 make a rainbow fact, and so it is tempting to try adding them first. But 20 + 10 is 30 while 20 - 10 = 10 and we can't use the 9 to get 7 from either of those numbers.

In the Classroom

The Balancing Act program supports the Year 6 statements for Number & Algebra in the Australian Curriculum: Mathematics. In the lesson plan given below, you will see how the app can be used to develop skills with numerical expressions with a follow-up activity that will provide evidence of real achievement.