Teaching pack: Understanding algebra at Year 7

Understanding algebra at year 7 will help your students develop their understanding of algebraic vocabulary and notation and improve their reasoning skills.

Featuring a range of mix-and-match starters, main activities, and plenaries alongside research and discussion tasks, home learning opportunities and an assessment, this pack is the perfect way to introduce algebra at KS3.

What’s included?
Starters, main activities, plenaries, group and independent learning tasks
Suggestions to support and challenge
End-of-unit assessment
Answers

What’s inside?

Introduction (pages 3-4)

Section one: Short tasks
Teaching notes (pages 5-7)
Activities (pages 8-12)
Using symbols
Writing formulae
Collecting like terms
Brackets
Factors
Answers (pages 11-12)

Section two: Developing concepts
Teaching notes (pages 13-16)
Activities (pages 17-21)
Substitution
Creating formulae
Collecting like terms
Expanding brackets
Factorising
Answers (pages 22-24)

Section three: Developing fluency
Teaching notes (pages 25-30)
Activities (pages 31-41)
Bubble substitutions
Coding
Walls of expressions
Magic squares
Error no error
Class activities
Dominoes challenge
Brackets challenges
Answers (pages 42-52)

Section four: Homework tasks
Teaching notes (pages 53-54)
Activities (pages 56-58)
Algebra key words homework
Substitution homework
Formulae research homework
Using formulae homework
Factors homework
Answers (pages 59-60)

Section five: Assessment
Assessment (pages 61-62)
Mark scheme (page 63)

The aims of this pack are to utilise year 7 students’ knowledge from primary school to build solid foundations for their understanding of algebra throughout KS3 and 4.