Hot and Cold Cubes Positive and Negative Counters

Learning addition and subtraction of positive and negative numbers can be a challenge to many students. Traditionally, students model using a number line and arrows indicating magnitude and direction, however, this representation has its short comings. An alternative approach is to model with positive and negative counters. A hook activity for this is using a story called Chef's Cubes, by Interactive Mathematics (http://mathimp.org/), which relates traditional counters to hot and cold cubes used