As soon as he sits down, a voice begins to speak.

"Unit One. Adding and Subtracting Within Twenty. Lesson One. Adding Within Twenty."

A picture of eight blue blocks and six pink blocks appears on the screen. Under it is 6 + 8 = ___. 

"What we want to do is think about what is equal to eight plus six. To help us out, we have eight blue blocks here and six pink blocks here. See if you can figure out the answer."

Okay. So if it's eight blocks and six blocks, he counts them, right, so it's... fourteen?

The voice continues, "The solution is to see if you can make a group of ten out of some of these blocks and to see how many are left over. So if I were to make a group of ten, I would use all of the eight blue blocks-- one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight-- and then I would need two more. I could get two from this six here. Nine, ten. And then I would have one, two, three, four left over."

The image shifts to a stack of eight blue blocks and two pink blocks, with four pink blocks in a row near it. 

"You see we take all of the eight and two of the six to make a group of ten. That's one bar. So we know our answer has one ten. And how many ones? We can see that right over here. We have four ones left over. So if we think about place value that's one ten"-- a 1 appears-- "and four ones"-- a 4 appears-- "or fourteen."

This really seems like an excessively elaborate approach to counting to Xue Yang.

"Now we want to figure out what is equal to eight plus seven. We're going to use ten frames."

Two sets of ten empty boxes, arranged five by two, appear on the picture.

"Each of these, you see, has ten boxes in it. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. We can put each of these numbers in their own ten frame. For the eight, fill in eight of the squares." The picture does so. "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. For the seven, fill in seven of the squares." The picture does so on the second ten-frame. "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Now, what is equal to eight plus seven?"

Xue Yang obediently counts the little circles. Fifteen.

"Now let's do this together. The reason that ten frames are useful is that you can think about how many of the circles you'd have to move from this ten frame to the other ten frame to have ten right over here. As you can see, we have two spaces to fill up. So we could take two of the circles from the right ten frame and put them in the left ten frame. Then what would happen? Erase two of the circles on the right. Remember, we don't lose them. We just move them. We put them right over here. One, two. Notice, I still have the same number of circles. I just wrote it differently. This helps us think about what this sum is going to be. Because now we've filled out all the squares in the left ten frame. So we know on the left side there's a ten. On the right side, you see, we filled out half of the ten frame, or one, two, three, four, five squares. Eight plus seven is the same as ten plus five, which is fifteen. You can verify this by counting. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen."

Or he could just count the circles in the first place???? Why is he bothering with this other thing. 

A piece of paper appears on Xue Yang's desk with ten questions with associated ten frames and blocks. 

Xue Yang is going to... count them? He guesses? This is very boring. He hopes class is done soon. 

When he's put the homework in the homework hole, the voice starts again.

"Let's think about what seven plus six is. Think about the answer on your own."

Wait! They didn't give him any things to count! How is he supposed to do this problem without things to count! He could use his fingers but he only has nine of them!

He gets most of the way through counting it on his toes when the video starts back up. 

"We could do this as seven objects plus six more objects, and then think about how many total objects we have. For example, we could think about seven tomatoes." Seven tomatoes appear on the screen. "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. And six blueberries. One, two, three, four, five, six. We care about the total number of food items."

Right! There they go. Why didn't they give him objects to count before?

"How many total pieces of food do I have now? I start with seven, and now I have eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen."

He KNOWS how to COUNT, you stupid voice. 

"I have a total of thirteen pieces of food. What are other ways we could have thought about this? We could have done it on a number line." A number line appears. "I can start at seven and move six more up the number line. One, two, three, four, five, six. Seven plus six is starting at seven and making six jumps up the number line. We get to thirteen. Another way to think about it is that we started at seven, we added three to get to ten, and so we have to add another three, which gets to thirteen. That goes to the heart of what the number thirteen represents. Thirteen has a one as its first digit, in the tens place, so it literally represents one ten, and a three as its second digit, in the units place, so it literally represents three ones."

Whatever.

"Look at the food again. That's one group of ten. We had to add three more to get a group of ten, and then we had three more. So when you add seven plus six, you fill one whole group of ten, and then you have three ones left over. Seven plus six is the same as ten plus three, which is thirteen. One ten is ten, plus three ones. Thirteen."

No, those are clearly totally different. Seven plus six is seven plus six! Ten plus three is ten plus three! Those are different problems. You can't say they're the same just because they get the same answer. What shit are you trying to pull, disembodied voice guy. 

"Let's think about what eight plus seven is equal to. Eight plus seven is like taking eight tomatoes and seven blueberries and seeing how many items of food you have. Think about your answer."

Xue Yang, who has caught on to trends here, patiently waits for pictures he can count to appear.

"Let's think about it. I'm going to keep adding blueberries until I get to my total of ten food items, and then I'm going to keep going until I've added a total of seven. One tomato, two tomatoes, three tomatoes, four tomatoes, five tomatoes, six tomatoes, seven tomatoes, eight tomatoes. Now to these eight tomatoes I'm going to add seven blueberries. So that's going to be one blueberry, two blueberries. And I'm going to pause there because I finished a group of ten. But I've only added two blueberries. I have more blueberries to add. I have made a group of ten pieces of fruit. I have one group of ten. So this is a two-digit number where the digit on the left is a one. But I'm not done adding blueberries! I've only added two blueberries. So let me add more. Three blueberries, four blueberries, five blueberries, six blueberries, seven blueberries. I have a group of ten, but above and beyond filling out that group of ten, which is represented here because this is going to be a two-digit number. This left digit is in the tens place, so it literally means one group of ten, which is right over there. How many more do I have? I have another five ones. So we have one ten and we have five ones. So what is eight plus seven? It is fifteen. The one in fifteen represents one ten and the five represents five ones. One ten is ten, and five ones is one. So fifteen is ten plus five. So eight plus seven is fifteen."

WHAT do all the TENS have to do with ANYTHING. 

Another homework appears on his desk. It has a bunch of problems that involve adding single-digit numbers. It also has no pictures.

Wait! Where are the things he's supposed to count? How is he supposed to do the math without things to count?

He explodes his paper.

Another paper appears on his desk with a different set of addition problems. 

WELL HE IS GOING TO EXPLODE IT AGAIN

Every time he explodes the paper, it is replaced with another piece of paper. 

FINE. You win, annoying disembodied voice. 

He takes off his shoes so his toes are readily available for counting and starts to work on the adding problems. 

See. He can do these problems. He doesn't need any nonsense about five plus ten being the same as seven plus eight even though it CLEARLY IS NOT. All he needs are his toes. 

The last problem is ten plus ten. 

WHAT. WHY ARE YOU ASSUMING HE HAS ALL OF HIS FINGERS. THIS IS STUPID.

He explodes the homework. 

Another piece of paper silently reappears on his desk, this time without 10 + 10. 

See. He's good at disembodied voices. You just have to be firm with them so they don't start getting any ideas.

He has no idea at all how any of this is supposed to help Lily but at least maybe he'll get a candy for it.