This activity comes from Michelle Rinehart and her blog How We Teach.

It connects really well with Unit 7: Mathematical Equality of the CUNY HSE Curriculum Framework. It is a nice warm-up or launch for the other activities in that unit (Keeping It in Balance and Noah’s Ark) as a way to get students to think about equations in terms of balance and how to solve them visually.

What do you notice? What do you wonder?

How would you complete the following statement:

An elephant is as strong as ____________ horses.

Can you draw other true and balanced equations using horses and elephants?

On her blog, Michelle offers the following prompt:

“Take a minute and think about how you would respond to this prompt. Can you solve this problem without first “translating” it into algebraic notation and solving via algebraic manipulation? Rather, can you solve this problem visually?”

The first url link above will take you to a student handout. The second url2 link will take you to a description of how Michelle used it in her class to draw out the visual solution first and then connect that to the algebraic manipulation.