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Elena and Lin are planning a cold-weather camping trip. They are studying gear they might need, including jackets and sleeping bags. Here is what they learned about some different equipment.
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The goal of this discussion is to help students make sense of the inequality statements given in the problem. Begin by asking students which gear they matched to each inequality.
Display the three inequalities for all to see, labeled with which piece of gear they go with:
Call on different students to read each inequality out loud. If students read the inequalities as: “Negative twenty is less than or equal to , and is less than or equal to 20,” confirm the correctness of their reading. Then ask them to translate that into a statement that is easier for customers to make sense of, such as, “The down jacket is suitable for temperatures between -20 and 20.”
Discuss how students matched the inequalities with graphs. Here are some questions for discussion:
For each statement, write an inequality to represent it. If a variable is used, be prepared to explain what it represents.
Han has 5 pencils, and Andre has 8.
Noah has more books than Kiran has.
Clare has more than \$200 in her savings account.
The most the mechanic will charge for an oil change is \$60.
Diego scored 1,200 points in a game, breaking the record for highest score.
Jada is younger than Tyler.
Animal World has at least 400 different species of animals.
Mai’s bowling score is more than Clare’s and Han’s combined.
The goal of this discussion is to connect verbal descriptions with symbolic representations of inequalities. Display these inequalities for all to see. Select several students to read each of these inequalities. Encourage them to read what the statement means, not just decode each symbol—for example, reading “ is between 3 and 7” rather than “3 is less than or equal to " and " is less than or equal to 7.”
After students read the second and third inequalities, ask, “What is another way to say the same relationship?” If not brought up in students’ explanations, discuss how “-5 is greater than ” is equivalent to “ is less than -5.”
Give students 1 minute of quiet think time to think about answers to these questions before discussing their answers as a class:
“What do you remember learning about inequalities before today?” (I remembered the meaning of the symbols, and that inequalities can also include and .)
“What did you get reminded about as a result of today's lesson?” (I was reminded that it can be confusing to think about values in relation to a negative number.)