The topic of rational equations is a gateway to precalculus. It must be taught with great care and interest. Many students find this topic quite difficult and fail to grasp the concept behind it. The main reason for this difficulty is that it brings together difficult topics such as fractions, quadratic equations, and rates of change. To do well in this subject, students must master these topics. Students who are not strong in these subjects will likely struggle.

The first problem facing the teacher is to find a suitable textbook. How the textbook is chosen is crucial. This is because students struggle even with easy topics if their textbooks were not well chosen. The rational equations syllabus constitutes sections in algebra books and there is no book that can be the only reference of the course. That is why I recommend that the teacher choose sections from various books and then write their own notes that incorporate the information in these sections.

The teacher must have two main objectives. The first goal is to make students understand the methods and technologies used to solve rational equations. The second goal is to allow students to understand how this is useful in our daily lives. This can be achieved by giving them a project where they can use their newly acquired equation solving skills to solve real life problems.

This will increase students’ interest in the subject by learning that after all this tedious work it is really worth it and at the end of the day they can do something useful with it. Additionally, they will learn how numbers and mathematical relationships relate to our real world.

It is good to let students do some homework remotely from the Internet. This will add enthusiasm to the work and make students comfortable with the most advanced modern technologies. Many people who weren’t exposed to modern technologies when they were young are skeptical about it for no reason and tend to abstain. That’s why I recommend exposing babies to as many modern technologies as possible.

The course should have assignments that vary in difficulty and students who are assessed to be doing well should go to the higher levels and those who are struggling should do more problems at the lower levels until they improve. The teacher should do a quiz at the end of each topic to find out which students need more work on understanding the techniques and which students can continue. The word problems should be the ones that solve real life problems. They should be given to students who have already mastered the techniques of solving equations.

Students who are struggling with basic concepts should be rounded up and given additional exercises to improve their skills.

In order for students to have difficulty understanding the concepts, each equation solving technique should be given a detailed explanation and then the teacher should perform several examples on the same technique. Students should be allowed to ask questions in class. The teacher must show a great interest in the questions and that it is very important for him that the students understand. The teacher should make it clear to the students that they should not postpone understanding until they go home and start studying on their own. They must understand everything well in class.

To make learning more interesting, the teacher should conduct laboratory experiments using calculators. The teacher would need an algebra calculator and a graphing calculator for this subject. There are also many new and innovative software calculators that are available that can perform other tasks in addition to traditional calculators. Some calculators can even solve equations related to kinematics. The teacher should also review these calculators to create new innovative math lab experiments.