In this activity, students analyze a situation and given solutions, and think about what questions were asked. They also write their own question that can be answered with the quantities in the situation. As they connect equations to a context, students reason quantitatively and abstractly (MP2) and engage in aspects of modeling (MP4).

• “How did you figure out the question that was asked just by looking at the equations?” (We can look at the numbers they used and look back at the story to see what they meant. For example, subtracting the years lets us know something about the difference between the years. Dividing 12 by 6 lets us know that the years and the pairs of boots were used to find an answer.)

In this task, students create their own word problems that must have a specific answer and follow additional constraints involving the type of operations that could be used to solve the problem or the size of the numbers they can use (MP2, MP4). 

• Select 1–2 students to share the problem they created for each constraint.
• Consider asking:
  • “How did you start?”
  • “How did you make sure 1,564 would be the answer? How did you make sure your problem would match the strategy that each student used?”