If you’ve ever worked with primary children, you’ve undoubtedly seen the look of frustration on your student’s faces when they can’t quite grasp the understanding of addition and subtraction. Usually, the problems stem from teachers introducing abstract symbols before students have had a lot of real experiences manipulating objects to help them develop a sense of quantity, number combinations, and number relationships. “Symbols come to have meaning only when they are associated with these real experiences.” Kathy Richardson So put away the workbooks and flashcards and break out the games. If you’ve used mine and Deedee’s Kindergarten or First Grade Math Units you know that we are a firm believer in giving kids conceptual experiences to help them develop a deep understanding of number sense. Here are a few ideas for things that you can do in your classroom to help your students build number sense for addition and subtraction.
Use the “Five Little this and five little that” poems to work on addition and subtraction. Let the kids be the manipulatives. Use language like, “3 and 2 is 5,” so that when it comes time to introduce the symbols for addition they will already have a conceptual understanding.
These monster puppets are a great way to get your students involved in the math poem.
Give your students lots of opportunities to play games that require them to build two sets of objects and then count them to see how many in all.
You can use any manipulatives that you have in your room and a set of dice to get started. Kids love using real objects like pom poms, keys, pattern blocks, and unifix cubes.
Want some of the prep work to be done for you? I have a resource that’s packed full of fun math games!
Here’s some of what’s included:
These low prep games work on cooperation, addition, and math fluency! You can check them out HERE
Thanks for visiting my blog. I hope you are enjoying your summer!!
