Lesson Plan: Subtracting Across Zero

Using Piaget

Conceptual Standards
Conceptual Standard 3.NBT.2: Fluently add and subtract within 1000 using strategies
and algorithms based on place value, properties of operations, and/or the relationship
between addition and subtraction.

Description of Lesson
Beginning: Review subtraction from previous week. Go over subtraction poem, and
discuss what to do when there is more on the floor. Discuss how the bigger
number is always on top. Remind students to start in the ones place and look next
door if they need to borrow.

Disequilibrium: Present a problem with subtraction across zeros, i.e. 900-

563. What can you do when you have a zero next door? Can you still subtract? How
much should you take away from the 9?

Middle of Lesson
Show students problems working through subtraction across zeros. Explain that
you must borrow one hundred from the hundreds place to make ten tens in the tens
place. Then the one can borrow one ten from the tens place to turn that into a 9 and
the ones into a ten. Provide examples on how to solve.

Use base ten blocks to help with regrouping. Provide students with the
manipulatives to allow them to see how the numbers are regrouped. The students
will then accommodate this new information about subtraction into their already
existing schema on subtraction and borrowing.

Introduce box method to students. Allow them to explore this method using base
ten blocks to figure out how this method works when subtracting across zeros.

End of Lesson

Students use base ten blocks to aid in their working out subtraction across zero
problems. Students then move to pictures to help them explain the process of
subtraction. Through concrete materials students can then move to pictures, to then
numbers. This allows students to work toward the formal operations stage. Students
can use the box method to also help them attain formal operation stage.