Goal: Think like a mathematician! Read the problem multiple times.
Rick keeps his trading cards in a box. Rick’s uncle gave him 6 packs of 8 trading cards to add to his box. Rick found that 29 of the trading cards from his uncle were different than any of the cards he already had in the box. The rest of the trading cards from his uncle were the same as those he already had. [How many of the trading cards from his uncle were the same as those Rick already had in his box?]
Source: PARCC Released Item 2015, 3.OA.D.8
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We like to use this task when working with math doers on restating the question (read #2) in their own words. Doing so positions the student to be specific about quantities. This is a great example of where precision in language and mathematical idea collide (MP6!).
The first time I introduced it, I asked how many students did not like word problems. Many hands went up. I told the that I had a trick for them that we were going to try this year to see if it helps them with word problems. Some students bought in and others did not. I introduced the 3 Reads with 4th grade rounding word problems. I think it helped when i told the kids that they would not need to answer the questions at all today, but instead to read a problem like a mathematician. We practiced multiple times, at the end of the lesson, more than half of the class thought 3 Reads would help them this year in 4th grade. My hopes are that the 3 Reads becomes automatic and they do not need to recall what each read is geared towards. For now I have an anchor chart they the students look at. We will see how the second day of 3 reads goes!
Kids had a lot of success with rephrasing the question on this one, and really thought about vocabulary such as “duplicate,” “pair,” and “double.”
lmnopenney, this kind of “when-you-need-it” language development not only helps with this particular tasks, but learning synonyms like duplicate, pair, double, and what they imply mathematically, carries over to any number of problems and contexts. Exciting.