Distance Between Houses

Submitting Organization: Illustrative Mathematics

Grade Levels: 6th

Subject Area: Math

Standards Alignment: Common Core State Standards – Mathematics

7.NS.A.1

Description of the Activity:

The purpose of this task is for students to solve a problem involving distances between objects whose positions are defined relative to a specified location and to see how this kind of situation can be represented with signed numbers.

A full solution requires systematic listing of pairs of houses, a valid list of differences – either subtracting the smaller number from the larger, or taking absolute value of difference in any order – as well as computations which could be done by counting on the number line or subtracting fractions.

Discussion Questions:

 

Resources Needed:

 

Link to further resources:

https://www.illustrativemathematics.org/content-standards/tasks/591