Try This with Students

How do you think different students in your class would complete this number line?

How would students justify their placement of numbers on the line?

Extension Question: Where would students place 10 on the line and how would they justify their placement.

Well, go give it a try (a PDF version of the question is available below). Note, don’t do any instruction on number lines before giving this question to students. Let’s just see what they do with it and how they justify their number placement.

In addition, come up with a strategy for having students share their completed number lines and the reasoning behind their number placement. How you set this up will drive the quality of the classroom discussion. I have some ideas, but I’m interested in what folks out there come up with and where it leads their classroom conversation. (One thought, how could you use hypothetical student answers to start an argument?)

No matter how you have students share, be sure to take note of the justifications that students give, regardless of whether they get the problem wrong or right.

 

Let Us know What You Find

After you have a chance to do this problem with students, head over to the Comments Section for this post and let us know what students did and said.

 

Full Assessment –  Number Lines with Whole Numbers

The problem above is from an 8-question pre-assessment for a number line review unit designed for middle school students. This 4-lesson “mini” unit was designed to assess, and reteach where necessary, four number line concepts that are essential for success with middle school math representations (e.g. double number lines, bar models, axes on a coordinate grid, and many more). If you are interested in an assessment that will apply to a wider group of students, there is a link to the PDF of this 2-page assessment below.

Note, questions on this full assessment provide a conceptual roadmap for this series of Number Line blog posts. Since these other number line concepts will be addressed in future posts, let’s limit the discussion in the comments section to Problem 1 above.

Links to PDFs

Single problem per page (good for projecting on an LCD)

Multiple problems per page (waste less paper when making copies for students)

Full assessment (8 different problems on two pages)