Video Transcript
David has four black cats and
two white cats. How many cats does he have in
total? Find the matching number
sentence. Four plus two equals five,
three plus two equals five, four plus two equals six, or four plus three equals
seven.
Let’s start by reading through
our word problem again carefully so that we understand what it’s asking us. To begin with, we’re told that
David has four black cats and two white cats. Let’s underline these numbers;
they could be useful. And underneath, we can see a
picture of David’s four black cats and two white cats. And then we’re asked, how many
cats does he have in total? There’s a clue in this question
which tells us what we need to do to find the answer. When we find the total of
something, we need to add to find the answer. So in this problem, we need to
add together four and two.
Let’s model the problem. We could use black and white
cubes, couldn’t we? Four black cubes representing
the four black cats and then two white cubes representing our two white
cats. So to find the number of cats
that David has in total, we need to add on another two to four. This means we can just count on
from four. We know we have four black
cubes, so we then have five, six cubes altogether. David has a total of six
cats. Although our problem was in
words, we can represent it using a number sentence. And we need to find the
matching number sentence. Do you remember what we did to
find the answer? We added together four and
two.
Out of the different additions,
we can see that only two of them show four plus two. But which one’s correct? Four plus two equals five or
four plus two equals six. We’ve already found the answer,
so we know that the matching number sentence is four plus two equals six. David has six cats in total,
and the matching number sentence is four plus two equals six.
