Description
What our Equations with Independent and Dependent Variables lesson plan includes
Lesson Objectives and Overview: Equations with Independent and Dependent Variables teaches students how to create tables and equations using variables. At the end of the lesson, students will be able to use variables to represent two quantities in a real-world problem that change in relationship to one another as well as create a table and an equation for the situation. 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 adjustment to this lesson is to have your students review independent and dependent variables by linking them to their current science lesson. You can also have your students graph their practice problems on a coordinate plane for an advanced lesson.
Teacher Notes
The teacher notes page includes a paragraph with additional guidelines and things to think about as you begin to plan your lesson. This page also includes lines that you can use to add your own notes as you’re preparing for this lesson.
EQUATIONS WITH INDEPENDENT AND DEPENDENT VARIABLES LESSON PLAN CONTENT PAGES
Equations with Independent and Dependent Variables
The Equations with Independent and Dependent Variables lesson plan includes three content pages. We use math every day to solve word problems, even if we don’t realize it! Equations are all around you.
For example, your school might have a fundraiser for the cross country team and might ask you to collect money to help your team by selling candy bars. You can sell each bar for $1.25 and each box has 20 bars in it. To begin, we can create a table to help figure out how much money you’ll make by selling different numbers of boxes.
20 x 1.25 = 25, so one box = $25. For our table, the first column can be boxes sold (b) and the second column can be money collected (m). You can use this table to write an equation for the amount of money (m) that you’ll collect if you sell a certain number of boxes (b). Looking at the table, you can see that for every addition box, the money collected increases by $25. The equation we can write for the table is m = 25b. We multiply the number of boxes times 25 to find the total amount of money.
The input is the independent variable and the output is the dependent variable. For this example, the independent variable is the number of boxes sold and the dependent variable is the amount of money collected. The amount of money collected depends on the number of boxes sold. Alternatively, the number of boxes sold leads to the amount of money collected.
If we wanted to figure out how much money we’d collect if we sold 30 boxes, we would use the equation: m = 25 (30). When we solve, we find that m = 750. Therefore, if we sold 30 boxes, we’d collect a total of $750.
Say the whole cross country team raised $3500 total. How many boxes did they sell? To solve, we substitute 3500 for the variable m: 3500 = 25b. We find that b = 140. Therefore, if the team raised $3500, they sold 140 boxes.
Another Example
We can also look at another example! Say you rescued a newborn kitten that needs to gain weight. The veterinarian says that the kitten needs to gain half a pound per week to stay healthy. Like before, we can first put the information into a table. In the first column, we list the number of weeks (n). In the second, we list the weight gained (w).
We can use this table to write an equation for the amount of weight that the kitten should gain. This equation would be w = 1/2n. We multiply the number of weeks times 1/2 to find the weight gained.
The independent variable is the input and the dependent variable is the output. Therefore, in this example, the independent variable is the number of weeks and the dependent variable is the amount of weight. The amount of weight gained depends upon the number of weeks. Alternatively, the number of weeks leads to the amount of weight gained.
If we wanted to figure out how much weight the kitten will have gained after 2 months, we can use the equation by substituting 8 (the number of weeks in 2 months) for the variable n: w = 1/2(8). When we solve, we find that w = 4. Therefore, the kitten will have gained 4 pounds.
If the kitten has gained 10 pounds, we might want to figure out how many weeks it’s been. To solve, we’d substitute 10 for the variable w: 10 = 1/2n. When we solve, we see that n = 20. Therefore, if the kitten gained 10 pounds, it would have been 20 weeks.
For each of these examples, we first created a table and inserted values that helped us create an equation. Next, we determined the independent and dependent variables in order to answer different questions. If you follow these steps, you will also be able to solve many different word problems!
EQUATIONS WITH INDEPENDENT AND DEPENDENT VARIABLES LESSON PLAN WORKSHEETS
The Equations with Independent and Dependent Variables lesson plan includes three worksheets: an activity worksheet, a practice worksheet, and a homework assignment. You can refer to the guide on the classroom procedure page to determine when to hand out each worksheet.
CREATING EQUATIONS ACTIVITY WORKSHEET
For the activity worksheet, students will work either alone or in groups. Each student or group will first choose a topic that interests them. For their topic, they will list the independent and dependent variables, create a table of values, and write an equation for their table. They will then create four questions about their table, two of which will solve for the independent variable and two of which will solve for the dependent variable. They will also provide an answer key.
TABLES AND EQUATIONS PRACTICE WORKSHEET
The practice worksheet asks students to create a table and an equation based on the information provided. They will then use their equation to answer the questions on the worksheet. They will do this for four different scenarios.
EQUATIONS WITH INDEPENDENT AND DEPENDENT VARIABLES HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT
Like the practice worksheet, for the homework assignment, students will create a table and an equation based on the information provided. They will then use their equation to answer the questions on the worksheet.
Worksheet Answer Keys
This lesson plan includes answer keys for the practice worksheet and the homework assignment. 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.
