Solve Add-To Word Problems

Students will solve word problems where a quantity is being added to another, including situations where the result, the change, or the starting amount is unknown. Students learn to identify the action of joining or adding to in a story and write or model an addition equation to solve it.

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Real questions from this skill, graded here. No account, and nothing is saved.

Grade 1 · Addition and Subtraction Word Problems · question 1 of 3

0 of 12

12 rungs. A star at the top.

Sam added 4 grapes to a bowl. Now it has 10. How many before?

How it is taught

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Add-to means more join a group.

The sum is how many there are now.

Read it: Start with the bigger number

6 crackers sit under a ring. 2 more crackers arrive. Count from 1 if you want, or start at 6, where the ring already is.

Say the bigger number you already know: 6.
Count on 1 number for each new cracker: 7, 8.
The last number you say is how many: 6 + 2 = 8.

Counting every cracker from 1 works, but it is slow, and it gets slower when the first group is already big.

Counting on starts from a number the ring already holds, so you only count the crackers that just arrived.

Start from the bigger group. 2 + 6 is slower as 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 than as 6, 7, 8.

When 2 groups join, say the bigger number and count the rest on.

Counting 6, 7 when 2 crackers arrive, because you said 6 as if it were the first new one.

Keep 6 still. The first new cracker is 7, and the second is 8.

10 ducks are on a pond. 1 more comes. How many ducks now? — 11. Start at 10 and count on 1: 11. 10 + 1 = 11.

4 + 3 = ?

Maya has four stickers. Her friend gives her three more. How many stickers does Maya have now?

Let's use a number line to help. Here are the numbers from zero to ten.

Maya starts with four stickers, so we put a dot on four.

Her friend gives her one sticker. We hop forward one — to five.

And another sticker. We hop again — to six.

And one more sticker. One more hop — we land on seven.

We can write the story like this: four plus three equals what?

Four plus three is seven!

Maya has seven stickers now. When more is added to a group, we count up to find the total.

Grade 1 · Maya gets more stickers

What you see

While they climb, your page writes one true line to ask about tonight, and a short note each Sunday.

MayaGrade 3 · Mathematics

Did you know?

A chessboard has 64 squares — share them out between the 8 rows and each row holds exactly 8.

Today’s goal: 1 star — one skill mastered, every rung of its ladder climbed
Climbing now: Divide within 100

An example student.

MayaGrade 3 · Mathematics

Maya earned 2 stars this week — Interpret multiplication as equal groups, which took 6 answers over 3 days before its star landed 3 days ago and Multiply by 6, 7, 8 and 9. Next up: Divide within 100.

An example week.

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Standard

CCSS.1.OA.A.1

Use addition and subtraction within 20 to solve word problems involving situations of adding to, taking from, putting together, taking apart, and comparing

Grade 1

Quoted from the Common Core State Standards.

Where this sits

Comes after

Solve addition word problems within 10

Leads to

What a star here means

A star here is the top of a twelve-rung ladder, in four blocks of equal length — three of facts and one of the skill used in a real question — where a right answer climbs one rung and a wrong one drops back to the start of the block, never below it. The star is kept for good. How we grade

All of Grade 1

This is one rung of 61 in Grade 1 mathematics, in the order they build on each other.

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