Creating and Solving Equations A2

In this resource from the DfE Standards Unit, students learn to create and solve their own equations, where the unknown appears once. Most students will have been taught rules for solving equations such as ‘change the side, change the sign’ or ‘you always do the same to
both sides’. When used without understanding, such rules result in many errors. ‘Doing the same to both sides’ is the more meaningful method, but there are two difficulties: knowing how to change both sides of an equation so that equality is preserved and knowing which operations lead towards the desired goal. Building equations is easier than solving them because it postpones the second difficulty and so is an easier place to start. For this activity it is helpful if students have already encountered the following ideas: addition is the inverse of subtraction, multiplication is the inverse of division and the use of brackets/fraction bars when multiplying and dividing (GCSE Grades A - D)