What is Algebra By Hand™?

Algebra By Hand is a web app that will give your algebra students advanced procedural fluency with

• Simplifying expressions
• Expanding expressions
• Solving linear equations

It corrects your students’ assignments for you and gives you a full grade report so that you can grade less and teach more.  It even reports which algebra skills each student has or has not yet demonstrated.

Algebra By Hand

• is a set of highly-engineered manipulatives that your students can actually manipulate,
• allows your students to drag and drop terms and factors to help them visualize the algebra-solving process,
• prevents students from skipping steps and chronicles their solving process with a coherent narrative that you and they can review,
• reduces their cognitive load allowing them to take a broader perspective and learn new solving strategies,
• and takes away the fear of making a mistake because it will not let them perform an illegal algebraic operation. It’s like algebra with training wheels − you can go in the wrong direction, but you can’t fall off the bike.

What level Algebra is Algebra By Hand for?

Algebra By Hand is best introduced to your students after you have given them a basic understanding of algebraic concepts such as isolating variables by applying arithmetic operations to both sides of an equation. Typically this is near the completion of their first year of algebra. It is NOT designed for students with NO knowledge of the subject. We depend on your ability to teach them algebra's principles of balance as you currently do. Only after they understand WHY algebra works are they ready to make the leap to visualize solving equations the way most experts do − using advanced procedural fluency the way Algebra By Hand shows them.