I'm not sure what you mean as each different type of problem should be approached differently, but typically teachers just want you to write out the entire problem after each step. They also don't want you to do more than one major step in between writing out the equations.
example:
[tex]0 = 2a + 3a + 4a - \sqrt4\\\\0 = 9a + \sqrt4\\0 = 9a + 2\\9a + 2 = 0\\9a = -2\\a = -\frac{2}{9}[/tex]
