In this section, students represent and solve story problems. This work starts slowly, with students acting out and then representing story problems that don’t have a question in them such as:

There were 5 students jumping rope at recess. 2 more students came out to play with them.

Questionless story problems encourage students to think about the context and the action in the story problem without feeling pressured or rushed to solve the problem. Eventually, students answer questions such as “How many students are jumping rope now?” about stories.

Students represent story problems with objects, math tools, drawings and numbers. They may represent each story problem in any way that makes sense to them. The important thing is for students to be able to explain how their representation connects to the story. While students are not required to create drawings in a particular way, they notice that organized drawings make it easier to see how the drawing matches the story problem. For example, the students may use any of these diagrams to represent a story that matches the expression \(5+2\).

K.4 Family Support Material