We created this workbook for our senior project at Carleton College with the goal of addressing student challenges with developing algebraic understanding. Throughout the project we worked closely with Mr. Dan Meyers, a teacher at Northfield Middle School, who instructs remedial math courses for 6^th-8^th grade students. He proposed the idea of creating new supplementary algebra curriculum for his students. He has introduced bar modeling to his students in the past using one of his favorite iPad apps for the classroom, Thinking Blocks. However, since Thinking Blocks has little algebra material, he asked us to develop a curriculum to extend the structure of Thinking Blocks to algebra. We observed his 7^th and 8^th grade classes for 10 weeks and then worked with his 6^th grade remedial math class and taught our curriculum for 20 minutes 2 days a week for 6 weeks. We want to extend a huge thank you to Dan and his students for welcoming us into their classroom! This workbook has been 
dramatically shaped by student feedback and our observations from teaching the curriculum.

The goal of this curriculum is to use explicit instruction, paired with scaffolded, procedural practice, of a schematic modeling technique in order to develop students’ conceptual knowledge of the relationship between variables and numbers in equations. This method should also help students gain insights and understanding into the standard procedural methods they have probably learned in school.