Making Ten Addition and Subtraction

 

Fellow teachers, I just added a Making Ten Addition and Subtraction packet to my TpT Store. The packet can be used to teach students to use a ten frame to make ten and find the corresponding fact family number sentences. There are three activities that can be used to take students from guided practice to independent practice or can be used for differentiated learning. This download also includes my Ways to Make Ten Posters which you can also purchase seperately.

 

Holly Wreath Fact Families

I realize it is not Thanksgiving yet, but it is not too early to start planning Christmas-themed lessons for our students. Are you looking for a fun way to have your students practice fact families? In this mini-lesson, your students will create a Holly wreath using leaf and berry clipart. They can make the wreath on a paper plate or free-form on construction paper. Once they make their wreath, they count the number of berries and the number of leaves and record it on the included recording sheet. The students then solve the total amount of berries and leaves along with their related fact family number sentences. You can download the template from my TPT store.

Fact Family Tree Map Download

Here is a fact families activity that I created to help my students identify related math facts. The students sort the fact family card on large construction paper to create a Tree Map. Sorting the cards into fact families helps the students understand that they must use the same three numbers in the addition and subtraction problems. In my class, the students worked in small groups to sort and create the Tree Map. A recording sheet is provided to use as an assessment of their individual understanding. You can download the file at my TPT store.

Ways to Make Ten Posters

A common strategy to help students with learning math facts is to teach them to make ten. These posters help the students visualize, on Ten Frames, how many are needed to add to various numbers in order to make ten. Once they know how many is needed to make ten, they can the add the remaining number to ten. For example, with the addition problem 8+5, the student visualizes that it takes 2 more to make 10 from the 8. They then visualize that 5-2= 3. So, 8+5 is the same as 10+3. You can download the posters from my TPT store.

Fact Family Flowers

My teammate, Ms. Branch, shared an engaging math lesson on fact families that went perfectly with our garden theme. Each student traced a flower outline with four petals. They then created a stem and leaf. I gave each student a triangle fact family card. They wrote the three numbers from their fact family on the leaf. On the petals, they wrote the four corresponding fact family sentences. We then added them to our garden display.

Garden Word Problems

Using our Promethean Board, the students wrote various addition and subtraction word problems and then took turns solving them by drawing pictures. After drawing pictures to help them solve the problems, the students then wrote the number sentence and answer with label. They then wrote the related fact family number sentences.

Fish Word Problems

We have been learning how to solve a variety of addition and subtraction problems. One of our lessons was to solve fish word problems. When solving word problems, one of our strategies is to draw pictures. First we read the word problems together as a class and the students decided which numbers they wanted to insert into the blanks in the word problems. Because the students could choose their own numbers, each problem was unique. The students then drew the pictures to match the numbers in their word problems. For addition, they were able to use the strategy of counting all of the pictures to identify the number sentence and answer with label. For the subtraction problem, they had to use the strategy of crossing out the pictures, or fish, that were subtracted and then count what was left to identify the number sentence nad answer with label. The students then worked in small groups to solve one another's word problems.

Space Word Problems

In math we have been working on solving addition and subtraction word problems using a variety of strategies. One of the strategies we use is using manipulatives. Another is to draw pictures. For Guided Math time, four or five students at a time would come to my table to write their own word problems with a space theme. The students came up with the word problem scenerarios as a group and I helped them with the spelling. They then supplied their own numbers for the problems. The students then had to solve their word problems by drawing a picture and identifying the related fact family number sentences. After all students had a chance to write and solve their word problems, the students then used beans and space problem solving mats to solve each other's problems. This also provided the students a chance to come up to the ELMO to be the "teacher." By the time we were done with this lesson, the students had the opportunity to solve eighteen different word problems. Because the problems were written by their friends and were related to our thematic unit, they were highly engaged.

Gingerbread Subtraction

On Wednesday we reviewed subtraction problems by using Gingerbread mashmallows followed by a fun word problem lesson created by my teammate, Mrs. Timms. The students placed however many gingerbread clipart on a cookie sheet that they wanted. (My teammate used foil which was so cute - too bad I forgot mine at home that day!) They then pretended that some of them fell off of the cookie sheet and glued them all down. They then solved a subtraction word problem by identifying how many gingerbread men were on the cookie sheet to begin with, how many fell off, and how many were left on the cookie sheet. And, of course, the students then ate their gingerbread marshmallows. Yum!

Fact Family Wreaths

To help the students understand related addition and subtraction problems, or fact families, they created Fact Family Wreaths with paper pattern blocks. The students chose between two different wreath patterns. These wreath patterns can be downloaded here from PreKinder and the pattern block templates can be downloaded here. After creating their wreath, they cut them out and glued them on the recording sheet. Teachers, you can download the recording sheet here for FREE. The students had to count how many green and red pattern blocks were needed to make their wreaths and then write the related math facts. We discussed how the wreaths with mostly green had to use more pattern blocks because they cover less area. Teachers, this is a great way to frontload the concept of measuring area. We also discussed that it takes three of the pattern blocks to make one red pattern block. Again, this is a good way to frontload a math concept - this time fractions.

Shake Those Beans

To help the students understand the concept of addition and subtraction, we have been playing a game called "Shake Those Beans." Each day we practice finding addition sentences for a set sum. The students get a cup of two-color beans that equal that set sum. They then shake the beans and count how many of each color and add them together. Fellow teachers, you could use two-color counters for this as well if you do not want to spray paint beans. They mark their answer on a graph. After each student has rolled their dice a total of ten times, we tally on the board which addition sentence they rolled the most. This is a great probability connection because most of the time, the addition sentences in the middle, such as the doubles, are rolled the most. The students find this fascinating! We follow up this lesson by building the various addition sentences with two different color sets of Unifix cubes. We then practice flipping over the stick to show how addends in a fact family just "flip flop" but the sum stays the same. We then find the related fact family subtraction sentences by taking away parts.

Dice Domes: Fact Families Practice

While shopping at Mardel the other day (seems to be an almost weekly stop), I found a great addition and subtraction resource - Dice Domes. The domes have two soft number dice along with another dice filled with plus and minus signs. The students shake the domes and then practice adding or subtracting the numbers. Because the dice are soft, they are great for math stations, which I call math tubbing. To help the students add and subtract the numbers, I gave each student a part-part-whole mat. But, not just any part-part-whole mat! We used Hefty's Zoo Pal plates which can be found at most grocery stores such as Wal-Mart. The students worked in small groups to shake the Dice Domes and model the addition or subtraction problem on their part-part-whole mat with beans. As they played, I walked around and asked them what other number sentences they could come up with based off their dice. We reviewed that in addition you have to start with the two smallest numbers, the parts, and in subtraction you start with the largest number, the whole. The students seemed to love it! On a side note, although the Dice Domes were not too expensive, my teammates and I brainstormed that we could easily make more with plastic baby food containers and dice. To make the dice with the plus and minus signs, we thought using corrective tape on regular dice to write the symbols on.

Fact Family Practice Online

EZSchool has a free fact family game online that students use to build four related addition and subtraction problems. The game gives the players three numbers and the students click on them to put them in the correct order in a number sentence. Parents, you can help your children while they play by remind them that in addition you start with the two smallest numbers and in subtraction you start with the largest number. Then remind the students that in fact families, the two smallest numbers switch places. Or, as we call it in our class, the two smallest numbers "flip flop."

Dominoes Doubles Snack Style Recording Sheet

Thank you to Carrie at A First Grade Teachers Passions and Obsessions for creating a recording sheet to go along with our Dominoes Doubles Snack lesson. If you haven't had a chance to check out her blog, go do so! It is great! You can view a slideshow of my students creating their Dominoes Doubles here.

Doubles Dominoes - Snack Style

My teammate, Mrs. Timms, had an excellent idea of how to get the students to visualize addition doubles. We use dominoes as manipulatives to teach doubles so she extended this by suggesting we create edible dominoes with graham crackers, white icing, and chocolate chips. We started by adding one chocolate chip on each side to model 1+1= 2. We then added another chocolate chip to each side to model 2+2=4. We continued until we had modeled 9+9=18. Of course, after modeling the doubles, the students ate them! Below are two close-ups of the edible dominoes along with a slideshow of the students making them.

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Doubles Tree Map

To help the students remember addition and subtraction doubles, we built a class Tree Map to sort and identify the facts. We included pictures of real-life double examples to help them visualize doubles. The pictures included things such as eyes (1+1=2), insect legs (3+3=6), and semi-truck wheels (9+9=18).

Addition Doubles

This week we are learning addition and subtraction doubles. Learning doubles helps the students recognize other math facts more quickly. To help your child practice doubles at home, have them play the fun matching game Ladybird Doubles. In this game, the students choose a doubles addition sentence card at the top and then try to find the matching sum on the bottom.

Subtraction Practice

Also on MoreStarfall, your child can play bowling to help practice subtraction. The students roll the ball and then a subtraction problem appears which helps them visualize taking away objects as a form of subtraction. We play a variation of this game sometimes in class with miniature bowling pins that I picked up in the toy section of Target. The students take turns rolling the ball twice. They count how many pins they knock over on the first roll and add it to however many pins they add on the second roll. You can extend the learning to relate addition and subtraction facts by having the students first count how many bowling pins there are and then subtracting how many they knock over in their fist roll. This can lead to a discussion of fact families.

First Grade Math Games

Each week our class visits the computer lab to practice our math skills. To make life easier, I created a Sqworl page of some of my favorite first grade math games. You can visit this page to have your students practice various games over addition, subtraction, skip counting, measurement, patterns, graphing, time, and more.

Ocean Addition and Subtraction

The students used fish clipart to model and solve addition and subtraction word problems. Each student had a different problem to solve and shared their number sentences with their table groups.