Algebraic thinking

Heads up! This course may be archived and/or unavailable.

This course is a part of 5th grade, a 19-course Topic series from Khan Academy.

Arithmetic is fun, but algebra is a blast! Look, nothing is easy the first time you try it so don't get discouraged. These tutorials will give you some straightforward explanations and examples to get you started down the road of algebraic thinking. We'll practice writing and evaluating numerical expressions, as well as seeing, interpreting, and graphing patterns and relationships between numbers. We're laying the foundation for lots of good learning ahead!

This course contains 2 segments:

Writing expressions

In this tutorial, we will learn to describe situations using mathematical expressions, and consider the effect of using parentheses in the outcome of those expressions.

Number patterns

One of the fundamentals of algebra is learning to recognize patterns among numbers and being able to visualize those patterns and relationships. So...let's use some mathematical tools to visualize, interpret, and graph patterns involving the coordinate plane. Trust us, this sounds a lot more complicated than it really is. Just follow along and pause the videos as necessary. We're not going anywhere!