Any parent or teacher who has done math with a first or second grader has probably had the experience of embarking on the task of adding three numbers together and what a life changing moment it can be.
This fall Honeybun got really fast with her addition facts, she could spout off the answer to single digit addition problems (2+2, 7+9, etc.) as fast as I can. But then we got to something she’d never seen before: adding three numbers (2+2+1). The first time she saw it, you would have thought she had seen a ghost! “I don’t know how to do that!” I quickly explained to her how she needed to add the first two numbers and then add the third to that total (2+2=4+1=5). She kind of got it but I wanted to make sure she understood the bigger concept so I took to making her a worksheet to help her explore the concept on her own.
A big part of the Common Core curriculum (which we use as a guide for our homeschool work) is to encourage students to explore a concept before giving them the answer or strategies for solving problems. This involves a lot of modeling using counters, cube trains, ten frames, and ones/tens/hundred blocks (terms most young elementary parents are probably familiar with!) Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of these items available to me at home so we just use whatever objects we have around: blocks, cars, figurines, doll shoes, etc.
The worksheet I created for her had her use objects to model ways to add using three whole numbers. The first time she did the sheet, she used ‘0’ in every problem and while this does create valid solutions, it wasn’t the idea behind the work so I had her redo it (after a lot of angry six year old words, we did the work together) and she began to better understand the idea behind adding three numbers.
I revised the worksheet after she completed it to make it more user-friendly (and prettier) and here it is, yours for the taking to share with your own little learners! (Best suited for 1st-2nd graders)
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