One of my favorite lessons to teach during the year is combining like terms. It can really be a hard skill for students to figure out at first, so every year I try to tweak my past lessons to try to be more proactive with misconceptions. This year I introduced like terms with an idea of making friendship bracelets. Students looked at a pattern that called for different colored beads. Students then discussed how to combine the amounts of each color used in the bracelet to figure out the total beads that we needed of each color. I totally stole this idea from a Math Club video on distributive property. The students saw the variables as actual objects that needed to be combined for a goal of trying to buy the right amount of colored beads for each bracelet. I have taught this lesson in the past and students always say they love combining like terms, but they always then ask how it relates with the real world. After teaching this lesson, I'm happy to say I didn't have one student stop to ask this question. Because we had defined the variables as something they could relate to, the students were able to see how they could use this in the real world. 
After introducing the objective, I then had groups complete a word sort with different terms that were written on laminated strips of paper. As they separated the terms into like term groups, students wrote down questions they had on a sticky note and placed it in our Parking Lot Zone (white board area). If they didn't have any questions, they were able to write something they noticed or learned and then posted the sticky note on our exit door. This activity was the highlight of the lesson. It was so nice to walk around and hear the student discussions and their use of key vocabulary words.
There are some great videos out there, but my favorite video I usually show before talking about combing like terms is the Khan Academy Chuck Norris Video. The students LOVE this video. I always then talk about an example with a term that has same variables but different powers being Taylor Swift. "Chuck Norris and Taylor Swift are both famous (x term), but taylor swift looks nothing like Chuck Norris. Therefore we can't combine these two terms together." The students for some reason love this part of the lesson. It seems to make more sense when we define these variables as actual objects they can relate with.
After showing a quick video, I then used the pieces from the word sort to model combining like terms. I have the kids show me with the pieces how to combine and then show me in their notebooks with different colored pencils. It's been three years since I started using these strips of paper while combing like terms and it has been amazing to see the difference in student understanding. In years past, I would have so many students making errors with negatives. Now the students break apart the expression physically using the subtraction as a negative, and they combine the terms by adding.
My exit slip ticket for the day included students creating their own real world example that modeled combining like terms. The students created some really great examples and it helped me check off my incorporation of literacy for the day. :-) Awesome!
If you need any clarification on any of the above activities, please feel free to comment below. If you do anything awesome for combining like terms, please share. Thanks!
