Friday, December 02, 2005

Subtraction With Regrouping

One of the subjects that I absolutely hate to teach is subtraction with regrouping. (borrowing) It is somewhat confusing to kids to grasp the concept. It doesn't help that our book spends a lot of time trying to get the kids to internalize the process and idea of borrowing tens. I guess that the purpose for doing that is so kids can understand why they are regrouping. In my humble opinion, that only makes things worse. It can take weeks for the whole class to really master the art of double digit subtraction with regrouping.

This year, I took a different approch to teaching this subject. During Intersession, I pulled a few kids and taught them this subject ahead of time. When we tracked back on this week, I taught the rest of the group. I also decided to skip the whole explanation of place value and I merely taught them the process. Guess what? It worked!!! We have been working on this for 5 days and with the exception of 3 kids, they can do it. They can even do worksheets of mixed subtraction facts where some problems are to be regrouped and some are not! The 3 kids who can't do it are still having problems with identifying numbers and adding and subtracting basic facts. That is another story...

Yeah math! ! !

5 comments:

HispanicPundit said...

Yay!!! Congrats!!!

Msabcmom said...

Thanks! It is pretty exciting. I can't wait to teach range and mode now - It will be a piece of cake with these kiddos!

Unknown said...

I agree, there are some math concepts that are just to complicated to explain. In fact I still don't "understand" regrouping but I can certainly "do" it and do it correctly. You know what, I don't really think it's hampered my life.
Sometimes I think we spend way to much time on the "concept" when it would easier to teach "the process".

Nebur said...

i find these posts hillarious. After all, you were a math whizz when you were a kid, right? Congrats on the good work.

Msabcmom said...

If only...I hated math SO much when I was in school because I did so poorly. I am trying to make math interesting and exciting for these kids - sometimes it is easy sometimes it is not!