The purpose of this activity is for students to solve a story problem on their own and compare the different ways they represent and solve a problem with their classmates. Students revisit and make sense of ways to represent a story problem with drawings and expressions and relate their representations to the meaning of addition. The activity also allows teachers to observe the strategies students use to find the total.

Monitor for and select students with the following approaches to share in the Synthesis:

• Represent the story with counters and count all.
• Represent the story with drawings and count all or count on from 6.
• Represent the story with and count on from 6.

The approaches are sequenced from more concrete to more abstract in order to invite all students to make sense of ways to represent addition. Aim to elicit both key mathematical ideas and a variety of student voices, especially students who haven’t shared recently.

• Invite previously selected students to share in the given order. Record or display their work for all to see.
• Connect students’ approaches by asking:
  • “¿En qué se parecen estas formas de representar la historia? ¿En qué son diferentes?” // “How are these ways of representing the story the same? How are they different?”
• If no students use expressions to represent the story, say: “Ayer estudiamos el uso de expresiones como  o  para representar historias. ¿Qué expresión podríamos escribir para representar esta historia?” // “Yesterday we looked at using expressions like or to represent stories. What expression would we write to represent this story?”
• Connect students’ approaches to the learning goal by asking:
  • “¿Qué relación hay entre cada una de estas representaciones y la historia?” // “How do each of these representations match the story?”
  • “Explíquenle a su compañero cómo saben que esta historia corresponde a la suma” // “Explain to your partner how you know this story matches addition.”

The purpose of this activity is for students to represent Add To and Take From, Result Unknown stories and compare the different ways they count to solve the problems. Students should continue to make sense of and represent each story problem in a way that makes sense to them (MP1).

In addition to the different ways students represent the problem, monitor for the different ways students count to find the answer. Students may count out each part of the problem, and then count again to find the answer. Others may begin to count on or count back. Although some students may use known facts or other mental strategies, choose counting strategies that match the actions in the story to share in the Synthesis. Students will continue to progress toward more advanced counting and computation strategies throughout the unit. The most important thing is for students to make sense of different strategies and relate the strategies to the different parts of the story (MP2).

• After the 1st Read: “Díganle a su compañero lo que pasó en la historia” // “Tell your partner what happened in the story.”
• After the 2nd Read: “¿Cuáles son todas las cosas de esta historia que podemos contar?” // “What are all the things we can count in this story?” Reveal the question.
• After the 3rd Read: “¿De qué formas diferentes podemos resolver este problema?” // “What are different ways we can solve this problem?”

Repeat with the other three problems.

• Invite previously identified students to share how they represented and solved each problem.
• Annotate student counting by labeling objects or drawings or listing the numbers they say when the count (9, 8, 7). Draw a box around the number that represents the answer.
• “¿En qué se parecen estas estrategias para encontrar la respuesta? ¿En qué son diferentes?” // “How are these strategies for finding the answer the same? How are they different?”
• “¿Cómo corresponden esas estrategias a lo que pasó en la historia?” // “How do these strategies match what happened in the story?”