Lesson 1

In this lesson, students review what they learned about negative numbers in grade 6, including placing them on the number line, comparing and ordering them, and interpreting them in the contexts of temperature and elevation (MP2). The context of temperature helps build students’ intuition about signed numbers because most students know what it means for a temperature to be negative and are familiar with representing temperatures on a number line (a thermometer). The context of elevation may be less familiar to students, but it provides a concrete (as well as cultural) example of one of the most fundamental uses of signed numbers: representing positions along a line relative to a reference point (sea level in this case). The number line is the primary representation for signed numbers in this unit, and the structure of the number line is used to make sense of the rules of signed number arithmetic in later lessons.

Print and cut up slips from the Rational Numbers Card Sort blackline master.  Prepare 1 copy for every 3 students.  Students will need copies of both sets 1 and 2. Keep the slips from set 1 (Integers) separate from set 2 (Rational numbers that are not integers) for each group. Consider using different colors of paper so sets 1 and 2 are easier to separate.