Unit 7, Lesson 10
Interpreting Inequalities
Grade 6
Preparation
Lesson Narrative
In this lesson, students explore situations where some of the solutions to inequalities do not make sense in the context of the situation. They reason carefully about a situation’s constraints when determining reasonable solutions (MP2).
Students begin by addressing a common mistake made when the variable is written on the right side of an inequality, such as , thinking that must be less than 15.
Next, students consider the context of points scored in a basketball game. While many numbers can be solutions to an inequality describing the number of points scored by a player, only some of those solutions make sense in context. Lastly, students look at inequalities by using the familiar context of hanger diagrams, contrasting the balanced hangers of equations with the unbalanced hangers of inequalities.
- Critique (orally and in writing) possible values given for a situation with more than one constraint, including whether fractional or negative values are reasonable.
- Interpret (orally and in writing) unbalanced hanger diagrams, and write inequality statements to represent relationships between the weights on an unbalanced hanger diagram.
- Write and interpret inequality statements that include more than one variable.
Let’s examine what inequalities can tell us.
Required Preparation
None