I.

Understanding Addition and Subtraction

 yung mga naka red ang ilalagay sa ppt, yung mga nakablack pang explain

C. How to Design an Assessment about Addition and Subtraction for Early Learners

 These tasks are designed to help you assess children’s concepts of addition and
subtraction.  The protocol begins with concrete addition and subtraction and
moves on to operations with symbols.

Assessment/Activity Strategies for Addition and Subtraction

 Adding and Subtracting Objects

1. Detect and explain a change in number.

Show a child a number of objects, e.g. 4 bears, and say that you are going to do
something special. Then hide the bears with a paper or cloth, and secretly add or remove
one or two bears. You might say, “Close your eyes. I’m going to do something.” Then,
uncover the bears so that the child can see the result of the addition or subtraction. Your
goal should be to find out whether the child understands how the items were affected by
what you did. “What do you think happened? Are there more bears now, or fewer, or just
the same? Why do you think there are more (or fewer) now? How many bears were
added (or taken away)? How many bears are there altogether now?”

2. Add or subtract (with objects visible)  

Show the child two bears (or other small objects) and show another bear to the side. Ask:
“How many bears will I have if I add one more? How did you know? How did you figure
that out?” Have manipulatives ready in case the child wants to use them to solve the
problem and show you the result.

3. Number stories (with many objects visible and available)  

Put about ten bears (or other small objects), as well as chips, a marker, and paper on the
table. Say, “I want you to figure out the answer to my questions any way you want. You
can use your fingers, these chips, this paper and pencil, counting, or think in your head.
My friend Tommy had one cupcake, and then his mother gave him two more.” If the
child responds quickly, try larger numbers so that you will be able to probe for the child’s
 strategies. “How many does he have now? How do you know?” This can be done with
subtraction as well.

4. Number Stories (with no objects visible) 

Tell the child you will tell a number story. Say, “Make believe that there are 3 carrots.
Then you get another 4 carrots. How many carrots are there all together?” See if the child
can mentally find the sum. Do the same with a subtraction problem. Say, “Now there are
7 carrots. What would happen if I ate 2 of them? How many would be left?” 

5. Number stories (check your work) 

Ask a child who has solved a number story in her head to check her answer using
manipulatives. Notice how the child sets up the problem. For example, if the problem
was 3 + 4, does the child create one set of 3 manipulatives, and then add a set of 4 to it,
one at a time, to get the total?  Does the child create a set of 3 and a set of 4 and then put
them all together and count the new combined set?  Watch Meredith: Number Story here.

Symbols for Operations

1. Formal mathematical language (plus and minus)  

Ask, “How much is four plus two? Similarly, you can ask, “How much is five minus
three?” If the child seems to be ready for it, present problems with sums greater than 10.
For example, ask, “What is 8 plus 3?” Ask the child to explain how they know so you can
figure out which strategies he used. For example, a child may say she counted on her
fingers. A child may reason that 8 + 2 is 10, so 8 + 3 is 1 more than that. For a subtraction
problem like 12 – 4, a child might start at 4 and count on until he reaches 12, showing 8
fingers. A child might also count backwards on his fingers or draw a picture.  

2. Mathematical symbols (plus and minus)  

Determine whether the child can use the standard written symbolism for problems by
presenting problems such as 2 + 3 and 5 – 2. See if the child recognizes plus and minus
symbols and understands their meanings. 

3. Mathematical symbols (equal sign)  

Determine whether the child understands that the equal sign shows equivalence. For
example, if a child correctly writes that 1 + 2 = 3, see how the child responds to number
 sentences like 3 = 1 + 2, 1 + 2 = 2 + 1, or 3 = 3. Some children might say that the 3 has to
be on the right of the equal sign because it refers to the result of addition or subtraction. 
In other words, they may see the equal sign as indicating that “you have to put the the
answer after it.” Early math education should help the child to go beyond this narrow
view of the equal sign.  

4. Analyze wrong answers (bugs)  

Sometimes children use flawed strategies, or bugs, to solve problems. In these cases,
what the child is doing does make some sense, even though it does not yield a correct
answer. Children enjoy getting to play teacher, so present a problem the child has
correctly solved, such as 12 – 8, but say, “Suppose you were a teacher and a child wrote
this: 12 – 8 = 16. Why might they do this?” Write the problem 12 – 8 = 16 vertically. See
if the child can figure out how a child could have gotten that wrong answer. Another way
to approach this is to present the problem and ask what mistake another child might
make. For example, present 8 + 3 and ask what mistake a child might make. Examine
how a child knows a particular answer is incorrect. For example, if you present 8 + 3 =
83, see how the child know the sum is incorrect. Do they say it is incorrect because they
know the correct answer is 11 or because they just know that 83 is much too big to be the
correct sum?

Examples of Activities for Addition and Subtraction to Support the Strategies

1. Activity 1 – using the language of mathematics

 Students need to recognize and use the terms ‘add’, ‘plus’, ‘is equal to’, ‘take
away’, ‘minus’ and ‘the difference between’ to describe addition and
subtraction. 
 For example, the teacher can supply the story “Mary had five oranges, Tom
took two away, how many oranges does Mary have left?”
 To focus on the language, provide students with the number sentence and ask
them to write a story to match.

2. Activity 2 – warm up activities

 Short, focused, frequent activities are great ways to start or conclude
a mathematics lesson. They are an opportunity to repeat skills that
need to be practised.

a. Roll two dice and add

This is a whole class activity where students sit in a circle and two six-sided dice are
thrown. Students share strategies for adding the numbers together. This activity can be
 played using subtraction and can be extended by changing the dice to eight- or ten-sided
dice or by adding in a third dice. The third dice will provide opportunities for students to
look for doubles, or friends of ten or to use known facts.

b. Calendar addition

Students find today's date on the calendar, count how many days until the end of the
month and work out the date 10 days later. Students explain strategies for their
addition.

c. Hand addition pairs

Write a number on the board (less than 20). In pairs students make the number and
record their combination. Ask how else they can make it.

d. Hands up

Students are asked to come out the front and make a two-digit number e.g. 24 with
their hands. Students soon realise they will need two others to help them. Do the same
for another two-digit number e.g. 27. Students then discuss how to add the numbers
e.g. grouping all the tens together then adding the ones, they will be able to make an
extra ten from the 4 and 7, so the student with seven fingers up changes to ten (and
joins the other tens) and the student with four changes to one. This activity assists
students in understanding the place value of tens and ones and how to re-unitise
numbers. You can record students’ strategies as they are explaining what they are
doing. You can then move on to representing the numbers using unifix cubes in sticks
as tens and loose blocks as ones. These strategies assist students in visualising the
numbers.

3. Activity 4 – finding the difference

 Students are given a number sentence with a missing element (using
numbers less than 20) e.g.

 Using unifix cubes, students work in pairs to make towers to represent the
13 and 5. They then compare the towers to work out the difference
between the two towers. As a follow on activity, you can have students
make the number differentiating between tens and ones using two colours.
This will link to bridging to ten strategies.
 This strategy can be done using blocks