BrightPath
Math Story: Find the Start
Name:
Date:
Today I am practising: reasoning backward to find an unknown starting amount
1
Some birds were in a tree. 4 flew away. 7 remain. Draw the after group first.
2
Use counters to find how many birds were there at the start.
3
Write __ - 4 = 7.
4
Some crayons were in a box. 5 were added and now there are 13. Find the start.
5
Circle whether you worked backward or forward in each story.
6
Write a start-unknown story for an adult to solve.
- Say before, change, and after while pointing to three boxes on scrap paper.
- Let the child build the known after amount, then reverse the change with counters.
- Avoid assuming every word 'left' means result unknown; identify which quantity is missing.