Teacher 1

How should we divide the phases of our presentation to get the students understand that the picture is about addition?

Teacher 2

I think we should show them the picture and ask them to tell a story in order to get the students’ word representing addition. I mean we show them the picture and ask them how they would tell the story about this picture. There may be some of them saying that there are nine children playing at the sand try and four other children at the elephant slider. This is to show them the whole picture like this. We will not show the picture one by one because we don’t want to imply an increase in number. In my first years, I showed them one picture at a time and it took quite a long time to back them back to the topic of addition. Then, we will ask them how they know that there are nine or four children. They will absolutely answer that they count. We are not supposed to be serious about this answer. Just let them tell the story and see what they observe in the picture.

Teacher 1

So, we have to let the students see that there are two groups of children, one at the sand try and the other at the slider. They can use any terms to name these two things and we will use their terms. They will see that in order to get the answer, they need to put two numbers together.

Teacher 2

After that, we will pose the question by saying our instruction: “there are nine children playing at the sand tray and four children at the slider, how many children are there in total?”

Teacher 1

No counting is allowed. Write down a sentence using mathematical symbols and tell me the method of how to get the answer.