Pictorial Integers for Visual Learners

I was going through a resource that I had saved, and was wondering why I saved it, so I opened it up and I found some very resourceful ideas.  One of these ideas was pictorial integers for Visual Learners.  This would be apart of our differentiated learner piece, teaching a concept in a different way for all our learners to understand it.

Looking at the table above, a student who works well using pictures can make good sense of the tiles being used.  You can see that  red tiles are positive and blue tiles are negative.  The student would just put or draw these tiles on the placemat, and allow for the natural process of cancellation to take into affect.  Once cancellation happens, cancellation meaning the same amount of different colours cancel each other out; which ever is left over would be counted.  Even though the idea of cancellation is a very simple one, it is very effective as well.  I could picture 4 students in my grade 8 Math class who would benefit from this type of activity.  I guess its good to look at resources you've saved, its usually for a reason!