The Authors
Steve Marcy
and
Janis Marcy
Santa Monica-Malibu
Unified School District
Limited Reproduction Permission: Permission to duplicate these materials is
limited to the teacher for whom they are purchased. Reproduction for an entire
school or school district is unlawful and strictly prohibited.
The authors wish to thank Mr. Bob Fine and Mr. Terry Green for their helpful
suggestions, and especially all our former students in Santa Monica who worked
with these puzzles as they were being developed.
Edited by Lyn Savage
Cover by Nimbus Design
1983, 1989, 1996 Creative Publications
Two Prudential Plaza, Suite 1175
Chicago, IL 60601 —
Printed in U.S.A.
ISBN: 0-88488-791-X
1.99NOTES FROM THE AUTHORS
ALGEBRA WITH PIZZAZZ! in a Binder is designed fo provide practice with skills and concepts
taught in first-year algebra courses, The series is an extension and continuation of the PRE-
ALGEBRA WITH PIZZAZZ! series, also published by Creative Publications.
We believe that mastery of algebra skills and concepts requires both good teaching and a great
deal of practice. Our goal is to provide puzzle activities that make this practice more effective. We
hhave ‘sled to build into these activities thrae characteristics that increase the effectiveness of
practice.
1. KNOWLEDGE OF RESULTS
Various devices are used in the puzzles to tell students whether their answers are correct.
Feedback occurs immediately after the student works each exercise, For example, ita
particular answet is nat in the code or scrambled answer lst the student knows its incorrect
He or she can then try again or ask for help. Adltional feedback and reinforcement occurs
when the student finds a puzzle solut on that is appropriate. We have tound that students
greatly appreciate and benefit from this immediate knowledge of results
2. CONTROL OF EXERCISE VARIATION AND DIFFICULTY
‘The puzzles within each major topic ere carefully sequenced ¢0 that each one builds on skills
and concepts previously covered. Each puzzle focuses on a specitic abjective. The sequence
of exercises within each puzzle is designed to guide students in incremental, step-by-step
fashion toward mastery of the objective. Exercises that depart Substantially from this
incremental development, or that require extraordinary insight, have not been included. On
the other hand, the exercises provide enough variety and challenge to hold the students’
interest and to represent the skill or concept fairly. Our goal is student success. That is, after
a reasonable period of explanation and examples, students will be able \o do the exercises
and thereby achieve the objective at a respectable level.
3. A MOTIVATING GOAL FOR THE STUDENT
The puzzles are designed so that students will construct a joke or unscramble the answer to
a riddle in the process of checking their answers. The humer operates as an incentive,
because the students don't get the punch line until they complete the exercises. White
algebra students sometimes decry these jokes as “dumb” or even ‘very dumb,” our
experience has been that students us sally look forward to solving the puzzles and that they
do enjoy the jokes and riddles. In addition, the variety and novelty of procedures for solving
the puzzles help capture student interest. By keeping scrambled answer lists short and
procedures simple, we have tried to minimize the time spent on finding anewers or doing
other puzzle mechanics.
\n addition to these efforts to make the puzzles effective, we have tried to make them easy to use.
The objective for each puzzle is given both at the bottom of the puzzle page and in the table of
contents. The major topic divisions and specitic objectives correspond to those in widely-used
algebra textbooks. Nearly every puzzle requires duplicating only one page. Finally, because the
puzzles are self-correcting, they can eliminate the task of correcting assignments.
We hope that you will find the teaching of algebra, and your students the learning of algebra, less
dificult and more fun with these puzzles,
Steve and Janis Marcy
ili