Words Meet Numbers: An Algebra Story

Author: Al Lucero

Growing up in LA County public schools, Al observed the need and impact school systems have on students’ personal and professional trajectories. The opportunities Al had led him to pursue a degree in Mathematics at Iowa State University as a first-generation college student. Al has since focused his work on establishing strong bridges that cut through existing barriers to guide students through STEM pathways. Al has experience with math enrichment programs in Los Angeles and is a former high school math teacher in the Clark County School District. He holds a master’s in Education from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and a master’s in Applied Mathematics from the University of California, Riverside.

This course is good for someone who…

  • Is a classroom teacher looking to explore algebra from a new perspective. 

  • Is an academic with limited middle school teaching experience: the course’s organization and student engagement strategies make it straightforward to use “out of the box”.

This course features…

  • Lessons organized around a topic or relationship, rather than a skill. For example, rather than organizing problems around solving one step equations using inverse operations, there is a lesson about using the formulas for the area of a circle in myriad ways. By putting equations in sequence like this, algebraic reasoning becomes a problem-solving tool.

  • High-energy activities such as mazes, team competitions, and stations.

Sample Problem

Deb is watching an online movie with a playing time of 2 hours and 18 minutes not including ads. The website shows a 30-second ad prior to starting the movie. The website interrupts the movie after each 10 minutes that the movie has played and shows another 30-second ad. If Deb watches from the beginning of the first ad to the end of the movie, what percent of her total viewing time does she spend watching ads?