step 1 of 5
You have turned stories into pictures before. Now a third way joins in: the number sentence. Ben has 5 blocks. His sister gives him 4 more.
Which number sentence tells Ben's story?
Connecting Representations
Move between real-world situations, drawings, and number sentences, explaining how each representation connects to the others (quantitative reasoning)
What a learner can do afterwards
- Write a number sentence (e.g. 14 + 5 = 19) to match a word problem and explain the connection
- Draw a bar model or part-whole diagram to represent a problem, then solve using the diagram
- Translate between a concrete model and a symbolic equation, describing what each number represents
1 · Read
A math problem can be told three ways: as a real story, as a picture, and as a number sentence. All three tell the same story. Learning to move between them helps you check your thinking and explain your answer.
Tap each star and count out loud.
Try it together
Ben has 5 blocks. His sister gives him 4 more blocks. Story: Ben starts with some blocks and gets more. Picture: draw 5 blocks, then 4 more blocks next to them. Number sentence: 5 + 4 = 9. All three show the same 9 blocks.
Tap each block and count out loud.
Check your work by matching the three tellings against each other. Look at each number in your sentence and point to it in the picture, then find it in the story. If a number in your sentence is nowhere in the picture, that is the number to fix. Taking away works the same way: things crossed out in a picture are the ones that went, so the sentence that matches uses a take-away, not an add.
A real story, a picture, and a number sentence can show the same math idea. Check that all three match.
2 · Watch
3 · Play
Take it off screen
Print a worksheetA4 with an answer key page for grown-ups. No screen, no internet.
Where it sits
Where this leads
Jobs that lean on this skill. Follow one to see everything it is built on.
Then practise
27 questions wait behind this lesson, each with its answer explained. Every answer feeds the sky: stars light as they are learned, and dim when it is time to come back.