The purpose of this activity is for students to think about what they need to know to solve two-step word problems. Students choose numbers that make sense together to complete the problem from the Warm-up. They articulate relationships between the quantities in the problem to justify their number choices. If students quickly find a combination of numbers that work, encourage them to see if there are other possibilities or to write a completed situation with the numbers they have chosen.

Students who do not choose a matching set of numbers quickly make sense of and persevere in solving the problem as they consider the relationship between the different quantities and the restrictions those relationships put on which numbers can describe the situation (MP1).

• Display this partially completed row in the table, such as:

  total number of apples	number of apples not in boxes	number of boxes	number of apples in each box
  200	152	8

• “Si les dieran esta información, ¿cómo encontrarían el número de manzanas que hay en cada caja?” // “If you were given this information, how would you find the number of apples in each box?” (I could subtract 152 from the total of 200 and divide the answer by 8.)
• “¿Qué ecuación podemos escribir para representar la situación de este ejemplo? Usemos una letra para representar la cantidad que no conocemos” // “What equation can we write to represent the situation in this example? Let’s use a letter for the quantity that we don’t know.”
• 1 minute: quiet think time
• Record equations that students wrote. Examples:
  •  
  •  

The purpose of this activity is for students to represent a problem with an equation using a letter for the unknown quantity and solve the problem. Students should be encouraged to use whatever strategy or representation makes sense to them. 

The Activity Synthesis focuses on student thinking for the first problem. Students might represent the situation with:

• A tape diagram or an area diagram.
• An equation that uses multiplication.
• An equation that uses division.

If students struggle to get started on a problem, encourage them to create a drawing or diagram. Students may also represent the situation or solve the problem before writing an equation if that makes more sense to them. While this activity is focused on independent practice, students can discuss with a partner if needed.

• “¿De qué se trata el problema?” // “What is the problem about?”
• “¿Cómo podrías representar el problema?” // “How could you represent the problem?”

• Select students who used different strategies to share their responses and reasoning for each problem.