Lesson 2

The purpose of this How Many Do You See is for students to subitize or use grouping strategies to describe the number of dots they see. They also make connections between the images to determine the number of dots. Grouping strategies and skip-counting by 2, 5, and 10 offer a review of grade 2 work and build toward multiplication in future lessons. In the synthesis, students revisit the language of “how many more” to prepare them to use data from a bar graph to solve “how many more” problems throughout this lesson.

• Groups of 2
• “How many do you see? How do you see them?”
• Flash the image.
• 30 seconds: quiet think time

• Display the image. 
• “Discuss your thinking with your partner.”
• 1 minute: partner discussion
• Record responses.
• Repeat for each image.

• “How many more dots were in the third image than in the second image? What equation matches your thinking?” (There were 2 more dots in the image. \(8 + 2 = 10\).)

The purpose of this activity is for students to create a bar graph that includes features that help communicate the data clearly. A class picture graph is created, and students make a bar graph using that data. During the synthesis, focus attention on similarities and differences between picture and bar graphs. When you create the blank “ways to get home” picture graph for the launch, feel free to adjust the categories based on how your students get home from school. When students label their graphs, including a title, a key, and numbers if they make a bar graph, they are communicating clearly and precisely (MP6).

• Create a visual display with a blank bar graph that will be large enough to fit a column of sticky notes in each category.

• Groups of 2
• Display an empty picture graph with labels along the bottom axis for bike, walk, van, bus, car, and train.
• Give each student a small sticky note.
• Have each student draw a smiley face on their sticky note.
• “Put your smiley face on the graph based on how you get home from school.”
• “What needs to be added to the class picture graph to communicate the data clearly?” (A title. A key so we know what each smiley face represents.)
• Facilitate addition of title and key to class picture graph.

• “Represent the data shown in the class picture graph on a bar graph with your partner. Make sure to include the parts of the graph that will help someone else read it.”
• 5–7 minutes: partner work time

If students create bar graphs that do not match the data in the class picture graph, consider asking:

• “Tell me about how you made your bar graph.”
• “How could we use the data in the class picture graph to help make the bar graph?”

• “How are our picture graph and bar graph alike?” (They both show the same data. They have the same categories.)
• “How are our picture graph and bar graph different?” (The picture graph has a key, but the bar graph has a scale. For the picture graph, you have to count each picture but in the bar graph, you can use the numbers on the side to tell how many.)

The purpose of this activity is for students to answer one- and two-step “how many more” questions using data represented in a bar graph. Students decide if statements about the data in the bar graph from the previous activity are true or false and then answer questions about the data. When students use expression, equations, or describe adding or subtracting to find how many more or less, they show they can decontextualize and recontextualize the data to make sense of and solve the problems (MP2). You will generate the questions students answer in this task from the class graph.

• Groups of 2

• “Now you’re going to use your bar graph to decide if statements are true or false.” 
• 1–2 minutes: independent work time
• 3–5 minutes: partner discussion
• As students work, decide which categories will go in the question stems for the next problem.
• Consider providing these sentence stems if students need support explaining their reasoning:
  • “I knew the statement was false because . . .”
  • “I knew the statement was true because . . .”
• “How did you know if each statement was true or false?”
• Share responses. 
• Guide the whole class to fill in blanks in question stems using the previously identified categories. 
• “Use the data in your bar graph to answer the questions.”
• 3–5 minutes: partner work time

• “How did you answer the questions?”
• “How could you use the graphs to answer the questions?”

• Ask students to share their responses to each compare problem. 
• “Do you have any lingering questions about how to answer these questions from the bar graph?” 
• Consider asking: “What equation matches your thinking?”