Math Workshop: How Many of Each?

First grade mathematicians continue to work on solving story problems about making combinations of green and red apples or orange and blue balloons to compose a target number. The task became a little more challenging as students took on the work of finding strategies to represent the apples independently. Our math curriculum uses student friendly language to call these problems "How Many of Each?" problems and the Common Core State Standard calls them Put Together/Take Apart problems with both addends unknown. Unlike many addition and subtraction story problems that we've worked on so far this year, nothing is changing in these story problems. Instead, mathematicians must keep the whole (the target number) and two parts (some green apples and some red apples) in mind in order to come up with possible solutions to the problem. This is challenging work! Above, you can see an example of a mathematician working systematically to determine ALL of the solutions for some green and some red apples to make a whole of 7 apples.