Description
What our Identify Terms and Coefficients lesson plan includes
Lesson Objectives and Overview: Identify Terms and Coefficients teaches students how to identify terms coefficients in mathematical expressions. At the end of the lesson, students will be able to identify parts of an expression using the mathematical terms “coefficient” and “term”. This lesson is for students in 6th grade.
Classroom Procedure
Every lesson plan provides you with a classroom procedure page that outlines a step-by-step guide to follow. You do not have to follow the guide exactly. The guide helps you organize the lesson and details when to hand out worksheets. It also lists information in the blue box that you might find useful. You will find the lesson objectives, state standards, and number of class sessions the lesson should take to complete in this area. In addition, it describes the supplies you will need as well as what and how you need to prepare beforehand.
Options for Lesson
Included with this lesson is an “Options for Lesson” section that lists a number of suggestions for activities to add to the lesson or substitutions for the ones already in the lesson. One optional addition to this lesson is to have your students use a highlighter to mark all of the terms and list terms of expressions. If you have more advanced students, you can begin to discuss the number of terms in relation to equations. Finally, to add to the lesson, you can begin to explore the idea of combining terms that are the same in expressions.
Teacher Notes
The teacher notes page includes lines that you can use to add your own notes as you’re preparing for this lesson.
IDENTIFY TERMS AND COEFFICIENTS LESSON PLAN CONTENT PAGES
Identify Terms and Coefficients
The Identify Terms and Coefficients lesson plan includes one page of content. Expressions and equations are made up of several parts, including terms and coefficients. Let’s learn what they are!
Terms
Terms are the number of parts in an expression or equation. We separate terms using addition (+) or subtraction (-) symbols. In the expression 9x + 7 – 3y, for example, 9x, 7, and -3y are the three terms.
There are five terms in the expression 8x² + 5x − 2 + 6 − 4x. They are 8x², 5x, -2, 6, and -4x.
Coefficients
Coefficients are numbers attached to variables through multiplication. For example, in the term 8x, the number 8 is a coefficient because it’s attached to x by multiplication. In the term -4y, -4 is a coefficient.
When you have a variable that appears to not have a coefficient, the coefficient is actually 1. You need to include the 1 when writing out all of the coefficients. We call this an “invisible 1”. The sign (+ or -) also goes with the coefficient and tells you whether the coefficient is positive or negative.
In the expression 5x + 12 + 1y, 5 and 1 are coefficient, and the 1 attached to the y is an invisible coefficient.
In the expression 4x + 5x – 3 – 2x, the coefficients are 4, 5, and -2. 3 is not a coefficient because it is not attached to a variable.
IDENTIFY TERMS AND COEFFICIENTS LESSON PLAN WORKSHEETS
The Identify Terms and Coefficients lesson plan includes four worksheets: an activity worksheet, a practice worksheet, a homework assignment, and a quiz. You can refer to the guide on the classroom procedure page to determine when to hand out each worksheet.
FOLDABLE ACTIVITY WORKSHEET
For the activity worksheet, students will create a foldable of the vocabulary words term and coefficient. The worksheet walks students through how to fold and cut their paper to create their foldable.
TERMS AND COEFFICIENTS PRACTICE WORKSHEET
The practice worksheet asks students to look at expressions and identify the number of terms and coefficients in each.
IDENTIFY TERMS AND COEFFICIENTS HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT
For the homework assignment, students will first fill in a table of expressions by listing the number of terms and listing the coefficients in each expression. They will then create expressions that include a specific number of terms and coefficients.
QUIZ
This lesson also includes a quiz that you can use to test students’ understanding of the lesson material. For the quiz, students will fill in the blanks using terms from a word bank.
Worksheet Answer Keys
This lesson plan includes answer keys for the practice worksheet, the homework assignment, and the quiz. If you choose to administer the lesson pages to your students via PDF, you will need to save a new file that omits these pages. Otherwise, you can simply print out the applicable pages and keep these as reference for yourself when grading assignments.
