Term 1 Week 8 Addition and subtraction

Activities to support the strategy

Addition involves combining two or more groups and subtraction involves taking part of a group away. Students need an opportunity to physically do this. The emphasis at this stage is on a student’s understanding of one-to-one correspondence as they add or subtract. The meaning of group (collection) needs to be made explicit. Recording should be informal at this stage with students drawing pictures to show their thinking. Model and encourage students to verbalise what they are doing as they demonstrate addition and subtraction. If students do not know the numbers 1 to 10 start with numbers 1 to 5.

Young children need to develop a sense of addition and subtraction. This includes combining two or more objects and removing and separating objects.

Big Picture Idea:

Use concrete objects to model simple addition and subtraction.

Activities that teach addition:

• Add amounts of everyday items, toys, fruit, books. Children may use their fingers to add.

• As you are walking add the number of different items you see, for example flowers in a garden.

• On a calendar, ask your child to mark the days they went to school or did another activity. At the end of the week add the number of days for each activity.

• When you are shopping, talk about what you need to buy. Ask questions such as, "How many bananas for everyone in the family? If I get one more, how many will we have?"

• Play games that encourage adding using two dice, for example Snakes and Ladders