Story:Good morning, superkids! We've been learning about the different powers that the kids of Noble's Green possess in our Read Aloud, Powerless. What if you could create your own superhero? Below is a list of may of the powers we'll encounter in Powerless and their corresponding power points. Create a hero that has the powers you want, and figure out how many power points your hero is worth. Record your own superhero equation.

Strength- 11 power points; vision- 6 power points; mind reading- 5 power points; flexibility- 10 power points; stealth- 17 power points; awareness- 16 power points; courage- 9 power points; invisibility- 7 power points; flight- 14 power points; speed- 4 power points; hearing- 6 power points; creativity- 21 power points

Inspired by Powerless by Matthew Cody; Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2009

Suggested manipulatives: Unifix cubes, multilinks, centimeter cubes, base ten blocks and place value trading mats.

Prep time: 5-10 minutes to put out a variety of manipulative block options, Math Vitamin recording sheets and trading mats.

Classroom time: Asking children to do their best work for each Math Vitamin assumes that some children will need a longer time than others. Ideally you want to offer a block of time for Math Vitamin projects and have another task available (writing, free exploration etc.) for those students who finish work prior to their peers. For this project allow 45 -60 minutes for students to work through all the steps.

How to individualize/stretch: This Math Vitamin is about having students practice beginning place value, adding tens and ones together and learning how to trade. For beginning explorations, give students the option to choose two sidekick superpowers and work on adding up the value of those two items with unifix cubes. For a student stretch, provide base ten blocks, make sure students are working in the hundreds and show them how to notate the beginning algorithm for adding multi-digit numerals together.