Solving Exponential Equations: Error Analysis

Students will practice solving exponential equations by identifying errors in the work of other students. This no prep activity contains four pages of practice problems (16 problems total) and a full answer key. Just make your copies and it's ready to go!

For each problem, students are given the original problem and the work of the original student. They need to figure out in which step the error first occurred, describe the error, and determine the correct answer. Each page of practice takes on progressively harder problems for students to review. Any of the pages could easily double as a great quiz in addition to serving as independent practice! The problems contain a range of common student errors, including inverse operation errors, sign/integer operation errors, incorrect substitutions, incorrect use of exponents and exponent laws, etc. Most of the problems assume students will solve by rewriting both sides of the equation with the same base, however the last page contains problems where students use logarithms to rewrite the problem instead.

Terms of Use: This product includes a license for one teacher, limited to personal use in their classroom. No part of this resource is to be shared with a colleague, or used by an entire grade level, school, or district without purchasing the proper number of licenses. No part of this resource (including answer keys) may be uploaded to the internet where it is publicly available in any form, including classroom/personal websites, network drives, etc. unless the site is password protected and can only be accessed by your students.