Word problem wizards double trouble two step math problems MightyOwl Math 2 nd Grade

hello this is mighty owl we are going to explore two step word problems today so get ready these are exactly like the sound instead of just doing one thing in problem you'll be doing two for example you might both add and subtract but enough of the chatter take look at martin and his huge bag of cherries let's check that out and do some math martin and his brother went cherry-picking martin picked 36 cherries and his brother 24 then martin and his brother couldn't resist the beautifully ripe cherries and ate 15 of them how many cherries are left let's think about what's happening in the problem first martin picks cherries then his brother does too it will be helpful to know how many cherries martin and his brother picked altogether so we've got 36 cherries and 24 cherries that word and means putting things together like peanut butter and jelly spaghetti and meatballs you get it and tells us to add we want to find the total number of cherries so we add up both parts 36 plus 24 equals 60. okay so martin and his brother started out with 60 nicely ripe cherries next martin and his brother ate 15 of them is eating adding or subtracting let's look for some clues know the boys ate cherries and the question asks how many left know that clue word means to subtract so we need to subtract 15 cherries from the total 60 minus 15 is 45. this means there are 45 cherries left that's still lot maybe next time martin will share with us so this problem took us two steps first we had to add together the amount of cherries each boy picked then we had to subtract out all of the cherries that martin and his brother ate great job we tackled this one together here's martin again this time he is preparing for party and he needs help blowing up balloons one of his sisters will give him hand in exchange for some more ice cream martin started blowing blue balloons and his sister is blowing up the yellow balloons it turns out that martin's little sister is not too great at it but that's okay she blew up 15 yellow balloons but three of them popped martin was able to blow up 20 balloons he wants to know how many balloons they blew up in all let's go over what we know about the problem martin's sister blew up some yellow balloons but some of them popped martin blew up some blue balloons together they have bunch of yellow and blue balloons first let's figure out how many of the yellow balloons survived martin's sister blew up 15 yellow balloons but three popped see those numbers 15 and 3 but do we add or subtract them we can draw picture to help us if three balloons popped that means there are three fewer now so we have to take away three from fifteen this leaves her with twelve yellow balloons now we need to figure out how many balloons are in all martin's sister blew up 12 yellow balloons and martin blew up 20 blue balloons can use the words and and in all for clues to add if you add the numbers 20 and 12 together you find that together they blew up 32 balloons 12 plus 20 equals 32 great work you did another two-step problem in this case we needed to subtract first and then add this party will be great it's secret but martin will be getting seven new mini action figures as gifts martin already has 28 mini action figures martin's brother has collection of 31 mini action figures if it's true that martin is getting 7 more he will want to know how many more many action figures he will have than his brother do you think we can figure this out it's kind of complicated so let's just take it step by step martin has 28 mini action figures he is going to get seven more know the word more means to add so let's figure out how many many action figures martin will have once he opens all of his gifts if we add these two numbers up we find that martin will have 35 mini action figures since 28 plus 7 equals 35. next his brother's collection has 31 mini action figures to find out how many more mini action figures martin will have we need to subtract we've seen those words before how many more means to subtract because we want to find the difference between the two 35 minus 31 equals four so martin will have four more mini action figures than his brother that's not lot martin's brother will definitely save up some money to buy some more anyway great work again you worked through another two-step problem first we added to find the total and then we subtracted to compare it turns out that two-step problems aren't that much more complicated than one-step problems once we figure out what to do first and then what to do second each step is like its own one step problem sometimes it helps to ask what happens first in the story to help you figure out the first step you can draw model to represent this if you get stuck look for clue words like first or second as well sometimes next or then will tell you what the second step is and just like with one step problems look for clues on when to add and when to subtract all together or in all may mean the total for one step or for the entire problem for example great job today see you soon