Toy Number Story - 3 Versions of a Separate with Unknown Result Problem
Another round of number stories is here and all the setup is done for you! Just grab some small toys, sit down with your child, and show them the number story video.
Why number stories?
Number stories are the key to helping your child build a connection between their counting skills and learning to add, subtract, multiply, and divide:
Contextual problems are the primary teaching tool to use to help children construct a rich understanding of the operations [addition, subtraction, multiplication, division]. These contexts are what elicit problem-solving strategies (Schwartz, 2013) and help children make sense of the operations. (Van de Walle, Teaching Student-Centered Mathematics, V1, pg 147)
Number stories allow our children to develop meaningful connections between their daily lives and their developing understanding of mathematics.
If the concept of number stories is new to you, I recommend first reading a bit more about number stories and why I start with joining and separating problems first in this post, Number Stories: Joining and Separating.
What type of problem are we solving today?
This week’s number story is a separating problem, which is different than the joining problems from the previous two weeks. Separating problems are often called “take away” problems. Unlike joining problems, in which two quantities are joined together, separating problems begin with the whole (the largest quantity) and part is separated from it.
In this week’s problem, the result is unknown, which means we know how much we start with, we know how much we separate (take away), and we need to figure out how much remains at the end.
This Week’s Problem
All the setup is done for you! Just grab some small toys, sit down with your child, and show them the number story video.
There are three versions, so you can pick the one that’s the best fit for your child (same story, different numbers):
(1) Version 1: Numbers within 5 (Click button below for video): You get out 4 toys to play with. When it’s time to clean up, you put 1 toy away. How many toys are still left to be cleaned up?
(2) Version 2: Numbers within 10 (Click button below for video): You get out 7 toys to play with. When it’s time to clean up, you put away 2 toys. How many toys are still left to be cleaned up?
(3) Version 3: Numbers within 20 (Click link for video): You get out 15 toys to play with. When it’s time to clean up, you put away 5 toys. How many toys are still left to be cleaned up?
After the story, pause to give your child time to solve.
Once they solve, the second half of the video shows one possible way to solve the story! Discuss similarities and differences between their strategy and mine. (REMEMBER there are LOTS of ways to solve! Flexible thinking is the goal.)
Join us next week for another number story!