Musings from Mrs. Galvan

My colleagues and I choose to to teach inequalities (simple, compound, absolute value, linear, systems and quadratic) all in one clump after solving quadratic equations. March 20th, I got started with solving simple inequalities and unions and intersections. Since solving inequalities always goes so quickly as by March everyone is comfortable with solving, I like launching into unions and intersections on the same day. As is most of what I teach, the party analogy for teaching unions and intersections was borrowed from a colleague. I tell them this story: I want to throw a party that includes the union of all kids who do ________ with all kids who went to ___________ elementary school. I change the blanks dependent upon who is in the room. Then I change it to the intersection, making my party a lot smaller, meaning a lot fewer sodas to purchase.  Big Party vs Little Party Once we get into trickier problems, like the union of x's greater than -1 with x's greater than 5...