Title: Fall Story Problems 
Grade Level: Second Grade
Lesson Objectives:

1. Students will be able to separate and combine quantities.
2. Students will be able to record their strategies.

National Standards:

• NCTM Standards Grade Pre K-2: Number and Operations: Develop and use strategies for whole-number computations with a focus on addition and subtraction.
• NCTM Standards Grade Pre K-2: Number and Operations: Develop fluency with basic number combinations for addition and subtraction.
• NCTM Standards Grade Pre K-2: Number and Operations: Use a variety of methods and tools to compute, including objects, mental computation, estimation, and paper and pencil.
• Problem Solving: Apply and adapt a variety of appropriate strategies to solve problems.

Rationale:
Story problems can be confusing and difficult to understand. Students need to have opportunities to take prior knowledge of addition and subtraction strategies and apply it to story problems. Students that can use these strategies quickly develop fluency in combing problems. When students have the freedom to solve a problem in the way that makes the most sense to them, they will develop confidence in their abilities and thrive.

Suggested Time: 50 Minutes

Organization of Instruction:

• Daily Review
• Assessment
• Introduction
• Individual Student Work
• Whole Group Discussion

Materials/Resources Needed:

• Pilgrim Pockets
• Chart Paper/Markers
• Fall Story Problems
• Cubes
• Blue Folders

Procedure:

• Launch: Pilgrim Pockets
• Gather students on the rug.
• Show a few examples of student work from yesterday; talk about how they did a great job showing their thinking.
• Introduce Fall Story Problems
• Must show thinking using pictures, numbers, or words.
• Must have number sentence.
• Must record their strategies so someone else can understand them
• Need to find a way to check counting; need to make sure counting is accurate.
• Count by 2’s, 3’s, 5’s, 10’s, etc.
• Do one together as a class and talk about how to record strategies.
• Talk about how hard they worked yesterday during math; really stretching their brains and challenging themselves!
• Discuss working together and providing assistance when needed; however; not doing the work for someone else. Allow students to sit where they want around the room.
• Dismiss students to work.
• Give cubes to groups of students.
• Pull B, D, M, R, and D (students names have been edited) for small group assistance; continue to monitor the rest of the students and take note of what strategies they are using to solve the problems.
• Students who finish early can make up their own story problems for others to solve.
• When students are finishing up, have everyone clean up, put their packet in their blue folder and meet on the rug.
• Discuss students’ work and strategies.
• Have students give examples of how they thought about a certain problem.
• Show multiple strategies of the same problem and show thinking on chart paper.

Assessment:
Formative: Observe individual student work.

• Do the students use their strategies (i.e. ten’s family, doubles) to solve the problem?
• Do the students record their thinking accurately?
• Do the students develop a way to check their answers?

Adapting of Instruction:

• Gearing Up: Increase the difficulty of the numbers.
• Gearing Down: Use smaller numbers; the students may understand the strategies, but get confused with larger numbers.

A student putting her cubes into stacks of
two to solve a math problem.