Synopsis:
In third grade, kids will be faced with adding one, two, three and if the teacher wants to challenge them, four-digit numbers. At the ICT math class, I substituted in for three months, half of the students were comfortable adding two-digit numbers while others felt ready to tackle three, up to four-digit numbers with ease. For any value, a similar approach exists, which kids can utilize and easily remember. It's shorter than it's written down, but for demonstration purposes, I would explain/write it in this manner.
Complex numbers with more than two-digit values appear daunting to children. As teachers, we might have children who are perfectly comfortable aligning values vertically in the correct manner and proceeding with addition, even placing the remainder in the right place value. We may also encounter students that will not be able to decompose 345 into 300 40 and 5 effectively. We should be ready to review with them place values before asking them to solve addition problems. Extra caution must be demonstrated with subtraction problems as students will align them up properly but when faced with a number in a place value on the top position in smaller value than the number below it, they might now know how to borrow from the number to the left of it and will just feel stuck.
Hi Fiorela! I really like this this strategy to break down the numbers when adding them, it is super beneficial to so many students. My students use the same strategy because to them it is much easier to understand and also visualize. I also liked that you mentioned some students could also struggle while using this strategy. It is so true every student learns differently, so it is great to have different ways to teach to different students. This may not work for one student but it could completely help another student better grasp how to add the numbers together! Great job!
ReplyDeleteThank you Kristine!
ReplyDeleteI agree with Kristine. It's so easy for students to see a big number and give up right away. My fifth grade teachers would always tell me to not let big numbers scare me because there was always a strategy I could use to not make them appear so daunting. This is a great example of that. :)
ReplyDelete