Spotlight on the Classroom
SPOTLIGHT ON K-2
ES1 - SEPARATING QUANTITIES
Why is it important?
Give it a reason:
Subtraction is a part of our everyday lives and therefore an important concept to develop early. We need to understand how to subtract in order to engage with society effectively as we use subtraction when dealing with money, cooking, travel and time, among countless other daily experiences.
Below Early Stage 1 students are engaged in thought using their Numicon tens frame to aid subtraction sums.
TIPS FOR PARENTS: Kinder
Play Snakes & Ladders or a game of skittles!
Play a pirate treasure hunt game where you start with 10 objects and the Kraken hides some away. Keep the left overs in a box so the pirate can work out how many items have been hidden. Then go on the treasure hunt to find all the missing items! Take turns being the pirate and the Kraken. This game could be a princess and a goblin or any other characters your child likes!
Count backwards together taking turns to say the next number. Play a guessing game. Say, ‘I’m thinking of a number. Here’s a clue: it’s the number before 5.’ Or, ‘I’m thinking of a number. Here’s a clue: it’s the number before 21.’
Draw a noughts and crosses grid and place a number in the middle. See if you can figure which numbers would go above, below, and either side of the number in the middle. The answers are (in clockwise direction from the top) 10 less than, 1 more than, 10 more than, 1 less than. Use a 100s chart to help you.
When you’re at the shops, ask your child to count the number of items in the basket. Ask questions like, ‘How many will there be if we put back 1 item? After we put 5 items on the counter, how many will be left?’
Play skittles! Write down the number of pins you start with, and take away the number you knock down. At the end, add your scores.
Year 1 and 2 - Separating Quantities
Why is it important?
Give it a reason:
To move from counting by ones to flexible mental strategies, students need to know number bonds to 10. The recording students make in combining and separating quantities can also provide support for their mental strategies by reducing the load on working memory. During this unit Year 1 and 2 students used number lines to aid computation when completing sums. When students use a number line, they can visually see the jumps they make, forward and back. They can hop by ones or by tens and see how addition and subtraction operates. Subtraction gets easier when students can ‘see’ the actions of subtraction when they use concrete or visual models.
