An interesting way to look at the kitchen floor is to count the number of tiles in the border. Fred starts with four white floor tiles and writes an expression for the number of tiles needed for the colored border. Algebra learners are to verify that Fred’s expression is correct. Emma wants to increase the initial number of white tiles to five, but her expression is incorrect. Help your number crunchers draw out Emma’s tile pattern and come up with the correct expression. Finally, ask them to develop an expression if the initial white row is n tiles.

Concepts

writing expressions, expressions

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Additional Tags

write expressions, math

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Pros

• A complicated expression where learners must look at the initial part and the growth part of an expression

Cons

• Learners must understand linear tile patterns before attempting this resource
• Part c introduces a second variable

Common Core

HSA-SSE.A.1.a MP3 MP7 MP8