Lesson 1

Story Problems and Expressions

Lesson Purpose

The purpose of this lesson is for students to represent and solve Add To and Take From, Result Unknown story problems in a way that makes sense to them. They also write an expression to represent the action in a story problem.

Lesson Narrative

Students solved these problem types and wrote matching expressions in kindergarten. In these problem types, the quantities can physically be joined or separated. This action leads to the resulting quantity. In this lesson students revisit these familiar problem types, and connect them to addition and subtraction expressions. When students connect expressions back to the story problem and explain the connection, they model with mathematics (MP4).

  • Action and Expression
  • MLR8

Learning Goals

Teacher Facing

  • Represent and solve Add To and Take From, Result Unknown problems in a way that makes sense to them.
  • Write an expression to represent the action in a story problem.

Student Facing

  • Let’s make sense of and solve story problems.

Required Materials

Required Preparation

CCSS Standards

Building On

Addressing

Building Towards

Lesson Timeline

Warm-up 10 min
Activity 1 20 min
Activity 2 20 min
Lesson Synthesis 10 min
Cool-down 0 min

Teacher Reflection Questions

Reflect on the Advancing Student Thinking questions offered today. How did they support students in making sense of and solving story problems in a way that the students will be able to generalize?

Print Formatted Materials

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Additional Resources

Google Slides

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PowerPoint Slides

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