A short little rant on equals signs:

An equals sign means that the things on both side are equal (the same, balanced).

When you use the equals sign as a signal that you have done a calculaton, it will make sense to everyone. That won't, however, make it correct.

We'll revisit this again when we talk about algebra at the end of the class, but I will in fact take off points every time you accidentally do it wrong.

Here is an example of doing it wrong:

I want to figure out what 6+6+6+6 is

6+6=12+6=18+6=24

This is wrong because the stuff on the left (6+6) does not balance the stuff on the right (24) so that means you have broken your equals sign (≠).

To do it right, you can do it the fancy middle-school way:

6+6+6+6=12+6+6=18+6=24

Or you can do it the long way:

6+6=12
12+6=18
18+6=24

Or you can do almost anything else that makes sense, so long as you do not abuse the poor equals sign and make it break.