The purpose of this activity is for students to make sense of and solve a new type of story problem—Take From, Start Unknown, using the Three Reads routine. As students discuss, represent, and solve the problem, they see that even though the actions in the story problem can be represented with subtraction, they solve it using addition. The Three Reads routine encourages students to make sense of the quantities in the story and their relationship before mapping out a strategy to solve the problem (MP2).

This activity uses MLR6 Three Reads. Advances: Reading, Listening, Representing.

• “What is happening in the story?”
• “How could you use connecting cubes or drawings to act out the story?”

• Invite previously identified students to share in the sequence described.
• Record student thinking with drawings and equations.

• “How are these methods the same?” (They all added 11 and 9.)

The purpose of this activity is for students to make sense of Take From story problems with unknowns in different positions. Students analyze one drawing and describe how it matches each story problem (MP2). As students describe how the drawing matches each problem, the teacher labels the drawing and includes a question mark for the unknown in the story. This allows students to see that although the same drawing represents three different problems, the unknown value is not in the same place in the drawing. They understand that the drawing is used differently to solve each problem.

• Invite previously identified students to share.
• Record student explanations by labeling each diagram with the known quantities and a question mark for the unknown.
• Record an equation with a question mark for the unknown to match student explanations.
• “How are these stories and their representations the same? How are they different?” (They’re all about beads. Each drawing shows 15 boxes for the beads and 5 of them are blue. The question mark is in different places. It means the total amount before any were taken away in one story, the amount that was taken away in another story, and the amount that was left in another story.)