Lesson 4

The purpose of this True or False is to give students an opportunity to deepen their understanding of the equal sign. This is the first time that students will do this instructional routine. Because equations are new to students, the teacher should read aloud each equation. When students are more familiar with equations, they will read the equations themselves when they do this routine. In the activity synthesis, students are asked to reword another student's thinking and justify the answer in a different way (MP3).

• Display one statement.
• “Give me a signal when you know whether the statement is true and can explain how you know.”
• 1 minute: quiet think time

• Share and record answers and strategy.
• Repeat with each equation.

•  “Who can restate _____'s reasoning in a different way?”
• “Does anyone want to add on to _____’s reasoning?”

The purpose of this activity is for students to represent and solve an Add To, Result Unknown or Change Unknown story problem. Students then compare each problem, including how the problem is written and how the problem is solved. Each group creates a representation and writes an equation to match one of the problems. Groups then pair up to share their work. Students attend to precision and use clear and precise language to explain how they solved and represented the problem (MP6). The activity synthesis draws out differences in the story problems as well as differences in how they are solved.

• Groups of 2
• Give students tools for creating a visual display and access to 10-frames and connecting cubes or two-color counters.
• "Today we are going to solve more story problems. The problems today are about different kinds of books. What kinds of books do you like to read?"
•  30 seconds: quiet think time
• 2 minutes: partner discussion
•  Share responses.
•  "Let's see what kinds of books the people in our stories like to read."

• Assign each group one of the problems.
• Read the problems.
• “Make a poster that shows your answer to the problem. It must have a drawing and an equation. Be ready to explain how you solved it and how you knew what equation to write.”
• 5 minutes: partner work time
• "Now find another group to work with that solved the other problem. Each group of 2 shares their poster, including how they solved the problem and how they know the equation they wrote matches the story problem.”
• 4 minute: small group discussion

• Display both problems and student posters of how each problem was solved.
• “What differences do you see between the two story problems?” (In problem 1, we know how many books Mai checked out, but in problem 2 we don’t. In problem 1 we don’t know how many books she has total, but in problem 2 we do.)
• “How do these differences affect how you solve the problem?” (In problem 1, we just drew 5 books and 4 more books. Then we had to count how many there were altogether. In problem 2, we had to start with 5 books, and draw more until we had 9. Then count how many more we drew.)

The purpose of this activity is for students to solve a variety of Add to and Take from Result or Change Unknown story problems. Students solve the story problems any way they choose and write an equation that matches the story and has a box around the answer to the question. During the activity synthesis, students consider the different ways to write equations for a story problem.

• Groups of 2
• Give students access to 10-frames and connecting cubes or two-color counters.
• "We are going to solve some more story problems about books other kids like to read."

• Read the problems.
• 5 minutes: independent work time
• 5 minutes: partner discussion

• Invite students to share the equation for each problem.
• "Why is the answer in different places in our equations?" (Because in some stories we know the two numbers to add together and then the answer is the total. In other problems we know the starting number and the total and the answer is the other number we added.)