Watermelon Party

By Jasmine Cabanaw

1. One hot day, my dad cut a slice of watermelon for me to eat. I counted 13 black and white seeds in the slice. There were more black seeds than white seeds.  How many of each kind of seed might there be?
2. Tell a story with many parts about different combinations of animals gathered around the watermelon. Draw and act out stories telling about animals arriving and leaving the party.
   1. Offer students parts of a story to encourage creativity. A math context is provided but there is lots of freedom in which to work in an open-ended manner. Drawings, bar diagrams and number  paths can be used to represent thinking:

Make up a story to solve that includes these words and numbers.

12       seeds     less     5

Possible solution: I had 12 seeds in my piece of watermelon. My sister had 5 less than me. How many seeds did she have?

                                                                             or

8          turtles   more    6

 The bar model is great for illustrating subtraction by comparison.

Possible solution: 6 turtles arrived at the party. There were already 8 dogs. How many more dogs that turtles.
composing/decomposing/ partitioning suggestions pg. 56