One-step equations worksheets

One step, not two, and the difference is a term of the school year rather than a difficulty slider. x + 7 = 12 is undone by a single move; 3x + 4 = 19 needs two of them in the right order, and a child who meets the second before the first tends to learn a procedure rather than the idea underneath it.

The idea underneath it is that an equation is a pair of scales. Whatever is done to one side is done to the other, and the letter is only ever a number that has not been said yet. Every answer here is checked by substituting it back into the original equation rather than by trusting the arithmetic that produced it.

The answers were worked out when the problems were, so the key is the same page with the answers drawn in rather than a second attempt at the same questions — there is no way for the two to disagree. The number in the footer is the seed the sheet was built from: it is printed so that the identical sheet can be had again next week, rather than one that merely looks like it.

This page is one sheet out of a family that can print thousands, and the settings behind it — how many problems, how big the numbers get, how they are laid out, whether there is room to work — are all switches. The builder link at the top of the page carries this sheet’s own settings, so the bench opens on exactly the sheet here rather than on a blank one.

The configuration travels in the address bar rather than on a server, so the link can be bookmarked or sent to somebody as it stands — and what they open is this sheet, down to the seed, rather than another one like it.

Not in the games. Undoing an equation is a fact recalled backwards, which is exactly what The Grid's division decks drill.