The purpose of this activity is for students to ask a question that can be answered with the given information and then answer the question. There are many different questions students can ask including:

• Who picked the most apples?
• How many apples did they pick together?
• Did Elena or Diego pick more apples?
• How many apples did Diego pick?

These questions require all the given information to solve. Students may also ask questions which require only some of the information to solve, such as, “How many apples did Han pick?”

The Activity Synthesis focuses on sharing different questions students asked and sharing how they found the answer, with a focus on the multi-step problem “How many apples did they pick altogether?” Images are provided for display, however, student work should be used as much as possible in the Synthesis.

• “How does your question match the story?”
• “What can be counted in the story? What quantities do you know? What is unknown?”

• Invite students to share their questions.
• Display a diagram that represents the number of apples Han picked, such as:

• “What does the diagram represent?” (The number of apples Han picked since he picked 14 more than Elena.)
• “How did you find how many apples Han picked?” (I added 30 to 14 to get 44 and then took away 1 to get 43.)
• Display a diagram that represents the number of apples Diego picked compared to Han, such as:

• “What does the diagram represent?” (How many apples Diego picked compared to Han since Han picked 15 more apples than Diego.)
• “How did you find how many apples Diego picked?” (I took 15 away from 43.)
• “How did you find how many apples Elena, Han, and Diego picked altogether?” (I added 29, 43, and 28. I put all the tens together to get 80 and all the ones together to get 20, and then I added 80 and 20.)

The purpose of this activity is to interpret student work with given numbers and use a story context to determine what question was answered. The first problem shows a tape diagram that puts together the three quantities in the story. The second problem shows a compare tape diagram with the three given quantities and an unknown. In each case, students need to reason about the representations and the given information to determine what question the work could answer (MP2). Determining the relationships between quantities and using them to ask questions and solve problems is an aspect of modeling with mathematics (MP4).

The goal of the Activity Synthesis is to identify questions, especially for the second problem, and discuss strategies for performing the calculations.

• “What do you notice about the student work?”
• “How do you think the student work connects to the story?”

• Invite 1–2 students to share questions they wrote for the first problem.
• “How did you know the student was trying to find a total amount?” (The tape diagram and student work shows addition.)
• “Why do you think the student added 51 and 19 first rather than 51 and 18?” (51 and 19 make 70 together. That way, there is no need to make a ten when you add the third number.)
• Invite 1–2 students to share questions they wrote for the second problem.
• “How did you know the question might be about comparing? Why not a question about taking away?” (The operation is subtraction, but Lin’s apples and Andre’s apples aren’t taken away from Clare’s apples. The diagram helps show that it is a comparison.)
• “What strategies can you use to calculate ?” (Use a number line. Make a drawing. Subtract 20 and add 1, subtract 20 more and add 2.)