Often, I hear exactly that… “well, two negatives make a positive….”, the students say. Sometimes they’re right. And sometimes, they’re wrong. Can you follow my vague, barely-told story and fill in the details? When would they be right? When would they be wrong?

How many of you guys train your students to “tell the story of x?” Once when I was substitute teaching as a coteacher in a middle school math class, the teacher revealed a strategy… and I’ve used it ever since. Instead of just “solving an equation,” they framed it like this: “X was sitting there minding its own business…. Until things happened to it. “Why isn’t x by itself?” It gets multiplied. Stuff gets added to it. Sometimes it gets trapped inside parentheses like a tiny hostage 😅 And your job? * Figure out everything that happened to x… - then undo it step by step to get back to the original value. It turns math into less of a “what do I do???” and more of a: “what happened here…?… and how do we get back?” And honestly… students get it so much faster this way. I’m curious— Do you teach like this? Would this have helped you when you were learning? Or if you’ve never heard it framed this way, what’s your reaction? Lemme know if you want to see this strategy in action! Drop your thoughts 👇

Two of my roosters are named after two of my favorite mathematicians. Pascal and Benoit! (That’s Pascal in this pic!) Anyone else got favorites?