Year 2 Subtraction Structures: What's the Story?
Year 2 Subtraction Structures: What's the Story?
WOW Lesson
This lesson helps children understand that there are at least 3 different story structures behind the subtraction operation. These structures underpin both word problems and the strategies we use for solving a subtraction calculation. This lesson can be used to introduce a sequence of learning in subtraction or to consolidate prior learning. Children are often introduced to the subtraction symbol as meaning ‘take away’. They read 11 – 9 = 2 as ‘Eleven take away nine equals two.’ One teacher recently said to me, ‘The trouble with take-away is that take-away doesn’t always mean take-away!’ This lesson makes it explicitly clear that there are three different story structures within subtraction: Reduction, Partitioning and Comparison. It also highlights the importance of using the correct technical language for subtraction.
Key Stage 1
Year 2
- Mathematics
- Number - addition and subtraction
- solve problems with addition and subtraction: using concrete objects and pictorial representations, including those involving numbers, quantities and measures