Video Transcript
Over a week, Madison practiced on her flute for five hours. This was three hours longer than she practiced the previous week. First, write an equation for the number of hours 𝑤 that she spent practicing the previous week and then solve it.
Let’s take a minute and highlight the information that we know. We have a week that Madison practiced five hours; that was three hours longer than she practiced the week before. 𝑤 represents the number of hours she spent practicing the previous week. And we need to do two things: write an equation and then solve our equation.
Let’s start with the five hours. Five hours is equal to how many hours Madison practiced the week before plus three. Let’s read this in another way. We have five hours, how many hours Madison practiced this week being equal to 𝑤, the number of hours she practiced last week, plus the three hours longer that she practiced this week. That was our step one: five equals 𝑤 plus three.
Our second step is to solve this equation: what plus three equals five? 𝑤 equals two and two plus three equals five. We now know that the previous week Madison practiced two hours. The next week she practiced three hours longer for a total of five hours.