I love the first question of Border Tiles: How many pink border tiles are there?
It's short. It's plain. It's easy enough for a preschooler to understand and hard enough to challenge a middle schooler to answer with algebra. That's a great question!
Start with the question, not the answer.
A good question is a compass. It can help your students find their way. So whenever possible in this lesson, and especially when the going gets tougher, when the algebraic notation starts to creep in and students start to wonder, "Where am I right now?" I hope you'll help them find their bearings by referring to the same question.
"We're just finding new and more powerful ways to answer the same question: How many tiles?”
"How many tiles?" is a compass. I encourage you to ask that question as early as possible in the lesson and to keep asking it as often as it's useful to you and your students.
Dan & the Desmos Classroom Team
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