The goal of this lesson is for students to understand that we can generally approach equations of the form  by subtracting from each side and dividing each side by (or multiplying by ). Students only work with examples where , , and are specific numbers, not represented by letters. This goal is accomplished by considering what can be done to a hanger to keep it balanced.

Students solve equations in this lesson in a different way than they did in the previous lessons of this unit. Here, they reason about things one could “do” to hangers while keeping them balanced alongside an equation that represents the hanger, so they are thinking about “doing” things to each side of an equation, rather than only reasoning with situations or diagrams or simply thinking “What value would make this equation true?”