Math: Put Together/Take Apart and Addend Unknown

                                             

Our Unit 2 math work continues with a focus on put together/take apart and addend unknown problems. This work gives students experience with developing their understanding of the relationship between addition and subtraction.  

Put Together/Take Apart problems involve part-part-whole relationships rather than actions or a change over time. To provide visual support for making sense of the relationships between the total and the two parts, students played the center game Shake and Spill. It’s also used to help generate strategies when students are introduced to problems where one addend is unknown,

The lack of action makes it more likely that students may think of this problem type in different ways. Some students see it as finding how many to add to get to the known part, while others may think of the problem as removing the known part from the total to find the unknown part. Students continue to highlight the ways they make sense of problems with objects and drawings and annotate the problems with equations: 4 + ___ = 9 or 9 - ___ = 4)