The purpose of this activity is for students to make sense of the action in Add To and Take From stories by acting out the stories. Students first listen to a numberless story problem and retell the actions. Then they act out the story with an emphasis on actions that show joining or separating. As needed, invite different students to act out the same story to ensure all students get an opportunity to participate and watch stories as they are acted out. In the Synthesis, students make connections to what they did to act out the stories and the structure of each story problem.

• Reread the story about 6 children listening to a story.
• “What did we do first to act out this story?” (First, 6 of us acted like we were listening.)
• “What did we do next to act out this story?” (Then 4 more people came and pretended to listen.)
• “How did you know that 4 people should join the group?” (Because in the story, 4 more kids joined.)
• “The words in a story help us figure out what is happening. If you imagine what is happening in the story, it can help us solve the problem.“

The purpose of this activity is for students to “act out” Add To and Take From problems in a way that makes sense to them. Students have access to connecting cubes or two-color counters and 10-frames, which they may choose to use strategically to represent and solve the problem (MP5). At this point in the unit, it is ok if students primarily represent their thinking with objects. Students may choose to show how they used objects with a drawing or with numbers in the workbook, but this is not necessary at this point. Look and listen for the ways students represent the actions and quantities in the story and demonstrate their understanding of addition and subtraction.

As students share their methods, the teacher records their thinking. It is important for the teacher to focus attention on how an expression matches each story during the Activity Synthesis. Although some students may attempt to write equations and do so accurately, students are not expected to do so until much later in the unit.

Students keep their books closed for the Launch of the activity, as the teacher displays and reads the problem.

• Invite previously selected students to share for each problem.
• “What are the different ways we represented what happened in each story?”
• As needed, “we can also represent each story with an expression. I know the first story matches 5 and 2 more or .”
• “How could we represent the second story with an expression?” (It matches 5 take away 2, so .)