Addition Fun - By Stacey Peterson

Addition is a lot of fun and is something you will use throughout your life. Pretend you own a peach farm. You will need to know how many peaches your or your workers pick each day. In this lesson, you will learn how to use addition, so you can add up all of your peaches and many other things you come across throughout your life.

By completing this lesson, you will know how to use objects to compare, count and add. You will learn the meaning of addition as well of the symbols used in addition. Finally, you will learn about the plus sign and equals sign, and how those symbols can be used to show an addition problem in written form.

Exercise 1:

1) Think about how a peach looks. Take out a sheet of paper and fold it in half.  Open the paper back up and use your crayons, colored pencils, or markers to draw two peaches on one half of the paper. Now draw three more peaches on the other half of the paper.

2) What difference do you notice between the groups of peaches on each side? Which side of the paper has a greater amount of peaches on it? Which side of the paper has fewer peaches on it? 

3) Now, count all of the peaches on the entire page. How many peaches are there in all?

4) Put the number "2" under the group of two peaches.  Put the number "3" under the group of three peaches. Put a plus (+) symbol between the two numbers. Put an equals (=) sign after the three. Put a "5" after the equals sign. This will show you how to present your math problem in written form.

5) Can you think of another way to show that 2 + 3 = 5?

Exercise 2:

Imagine you own a peach farm you have hired two people to help you pick the peaches from the trees.  You must figure out how many peaches you will have available to sell after both workers have finished working for the day.

1) Worker number 1 picked three peaches and worker number 2 picked 4 peaches.

2) Find the total number of peaches picked by using your fingers to show the amount picked by each worker. Hint: you can hold up three fingers on one hand and two fingers on the other hand and then count how many fingers you are holding up in all.

3) Create a chart by drawing the amount of peaches each worker picked.  Draw the peaches stacked on top of each other so you can compare the amount of peaches picked by each worker. By looking at your chart, can you tell which worker picked more peaches? Less peaches?

4) Label each column in your chart with the number of peaches for each worker.

5) Add all of the peaches together. How many peaches are there in all for you to sell? Is this the same total you came up with when you used your fingers to find the total? Which method made more sense to you? Why?

Exercise 3:

You have decided that you will try picking your peaches on your own without hiring anyone to help you. On the first day you were able to pick two peaches. On the second day you could only pick one peach. On the third day you picked two peaches. On the fourth day you picked one peach.

1) Draw four boxes in a row on a sheet of paper.  Draw the amount of peaches picked each day in the boxes. Use the first box for day one and follow the boxes in order as you draw your peaches.

2) Do you notice a pattern in the amount of peaches picked over the four day period?  If so, what is the pattern?

3) Based on the pattern you found, how many peaches would you expect to pick on day five?

4) Use your pictures to add up the total amount of peaches you picked in four days. What is that total?

5) You should have found that there were six peaches picked over the four day period. Think of your own way to show amounts that add up to six. Show your problem on your paper.

	Beginning 1	Developing 2	Accomplished 3	Exemplary 4	Score
Completion of Tasks	Learner attempts to complete each task, but most of the work is incomplete.	Learner attempts to complete each task, but some of the work is incomplete.	Learner attempts to complete each task and most work is complete.	Learner completes every task on time.
Effort	Student made no effort.	Student made little effort.	Student made some effort.	Student made good effort.
Addition Concepts	Student does not display knowledge of addition concepts.	Student displays little knowledge of addition concepts.	Student displays some knowledge of addition concepts.	Student displays good knowledge of addition concepts.
Addition Terms	Student is unaware of addition terms. (plus, equals, sum, add)	Student is aware of one of the addition terms. (plus, equals, sum, add)	Student is aware of most of the addition terms. (plus, equals, sum, add)	Student is aware of all of the addition terms. (plus, equals, sum, add)

Now that you have completed this lesson, you should have a better understanding of how to add numbers between one and nine. You can use the strategy that works best for you to solve addition problems in the future. 

What was your favorite strategy that we used to add numbers together?

Was there any method that was harder than the others?

Do you think you could explain addition to someone else?

West Virginia Content Standards covered in this WebQuest:

M.K.6 - Identify whether the number of objects in one group is greater than, less than, or equal to the number of objects in another group (e.g., by using matching and counting strategies).

M.K.8 - Represent addition and subtraction with objects, fingers, mental images, drawings, sounds (e.g., claps), and acting out situations, verbal explanations, expressions, or equations.

M.K.9 - Solve addition and subtraction word problems and add and subtract within 10 by using objects or drawings to represent the problem.

Permissions:

Others are granted permission to use and modify this WebQuest for educational, non-commercial purposes as long as the original authorship is credited.

     This WebQuest is designed to teach addition to a kindergarten student. In recent years, teachers have been encouraged to include higher level thinking in their instruction. This can be accomplished by using questioning strategies that cause students to use what they know to answer questions that are not already given in the course material (Taylor, 2012). By using higher level thinking, students take the knowledge they already have and combine it with the new information to make a connection. Higher level thinking can be seen throughout the process section of this WebQuest. Students are asked to find alternative ways to show addition problems, compare quantities, create charts with information, and find patterns in data.  These tasks require students to go beyond simply recalling information and cause them to draw from their experiences to come to conclusions.  This prompts students to evaluate and apply what they have learned so they can use their new skills in a variety of situations.

Reference

Taylor, S. (2012). Thinking outside the box: Higher order thinking in kindergarten. Retrieved from https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/blog-posts/sharon-taylor/thinking-outside-box-higher-order-thinking-kindergarten/