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Expressions and Equations Systems of Equations

Solving Systems Algebraically

nicoleparis1

Spot the mistake, and then say something smart about it.

Thanks to Nicole Paris for the submission.

3 replies on “Solving Systems Algebraically”

I see this SO often! Not distributing the minus sign! Usually the students knows (or knew at one time) that the -4 should have been changed to a +8, but it slips them.

The way that I deal with this is to say “ALWAYS check your answer.” After checking their answer they can look through their steps again and maybe they’ll see what they did wrong. If they don’t see it, then talk about the distributive property again.

The student isnt taking the negative sign with the two as he distributes it. I think that the area model for teaching the distributive property might help with this problem because it may help the student to not see “minus two” here but “negative two” instead.

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