PROJECT #1 - Cognitive Demand of Task

Task #1: Marcie had 525 stickers in her collection. Then Marcie gave Cathy 168 stickers. How many stickers
does Marcie have in her collection now?

Revised task:
Marcie and Cathy are starting a sticker collection. Marcie collects 525 stickers and gives Cathy 168 of
those stickers. If Cathy started with 143 stickers, who has more stickers now? Use base-ten blocks to
explore, and draw a picture to show how you used them in finding the answer. Explain your answer
using the base-ten blocks.
Solution:
(I will refer to 100-blocks as flats, 10-blocks as rods, and 1-blocks as unit blocks).
Marcie has more stickers. She started with 525 stickers and Cathy started with 143 stickers. This is
represented by base ten blocks. In other words, Marcie has 5 one-hundred blocks (5 flats), 2 ten blocks
(2 rods), and 5 one blocks (5 unit blocks). Cathy has 1 flat, 4 rods, and 3 unit blocks. You can see this
represented in the first picture.

When Marcie gave 168 stickers to Cathy, she took them from her collection and added them to Cathys
existing collection of 143. So, to represent this, I needed to move 168 blocks from Marcies collection
to Cathys collection. I could easily move 100 blocks by taking a flat from Marcie and moving it to
Cathys collection, representing 100 stickers. However, I needed to break apart one of Marcies flats
into 10 rods in order to have enough rods to move over. After doing so, I moved 6 rods from Marcies
collection to Cathys collection to represent 60 more stickers. Finally, I needed to move 8 unit blocks to
make a total of 168 blocks, representing 168 stickers, moved from Marcies collection to Cathys
collection. In order to do this, I broke apart one rod in Marcies collection so that I would have enough
unit blocks to move over. Once all 168 blocks were moved to Cathys collection, I combined 10 of the
rods and replaced them with a flat so that it would be easier to count. I also combined 10 of the unit
blocks and replaced them with a rod for the same reason. This second picture represents this whole
process.

The last thing I did was counted the blocks that Marcie and Cathy each had in their collections. Marcie
had 357 blocks and Cathy had 311. That means that after giving 168 stickers Cathy, Marcie had 357
blocks, and Cathy had 311 blocks. 357 stickers is more than 311 stickers, and you can visibly see that
Marcie has more blocks, meaning stickers, than Cathy does. Therefore, Marcie has more stickers than
Cathy. Here is the picture to show their final amounts of blocks, or stickers.

Level of cognitive demand for revised task:

The level of this task is Procedures with Connections.

Descriptors with explanation:

Descriptor: Are usually represented in multiple ways (e.g. visuals, manipulatives, symbols, problem
situations)

Explanation: In this problem, students must show their work with base-ten blocks. Therefore,
they are not just subtracting numbers, but they are representing how subtraction works by
utilizing base-ten blocks in finding the answer.

Descriptor: Require that students engage with the conceptual ideas that underlie the procedures in
order to successfully complete the task.

Explanation: In this problem, students must subtract stickers from Marcies collection, and add
them to Cathys collection. Instead of just writing these subtraction and addition statements,
they must use the base-ten blocks to further understand how subtraction and addition fit
together in this problem. When moving the blocks from Marcies collection to Cathys
collection, they can see that the same blocks that are subtracted from Marcie are the ones that
are added to Cathy. New blocks, or stickers, are not added into the formula, and the students
can come to this conclusion through use of the blocks. They can also further break apart 168 to
100+60+8 by breaking down the number by hundreds, tens, and ones. Furthermore, they can
understand that there are ten 1-blocks in a 10-block (or rod), and ten 10-blocks in 100-block (or
flat). They discover this when breaking down these blocks and putting them together.