Adding & Subtracting Ten(s)–1st Grade Skill or Intervention?
There are certain skills that if not learned early in math will be a detriment throughout a student’s entire math career. Learning to add ten or subtract ten is one of these skills. In later elementary grades, if the simplistic skill of adding and subtracting ten is not learned students will struggle with other math concepts.
For these reasons, I believe that is why this product is one of the best sellers in my shop. The skill of adding or subtracting ten is visually taught through patterns on the hundreds chart. I have newly revised this product to include answer keys, new borders, and new fonts. If you are looking for a product to teach your students to add or subtract ten— a skill they will need for their entire school career, look no further.
A Discovering Patterns worksheet with the hundreds chart and Mental Math Fluency Check are included in this packet for each of the following:
*Adding 10 to a One-Digit Number
*Adding 10 to Multiples of 10
*Subtracting 10 from Multiples of 10
*Adding 10 within 100
*Subtracting 10 within 100
*Adding Multiples of 10 within 100
*Subtracting Multiples of 10 within 100
Answer keys are also included.
Are Your Students Adding and Subtracting 10?
Are you teaching your firsties to add ten, subtract ten, add 1 and subtract 1? The week before Christmas we added this game to one of the selections in the students’ math stations. This game is called “Bubble Gum Pop”. The kids absolutely LOVE it!!! 
Students move “bubble gum balls” (bingo chips) up and down the 100’s chart mat according to the spinner. The game is differentiated for students who need more of a challenge so that they can use a mat that counts to numbers past 100 or they can use a bubble gum spinner that allows them to even add or subtract multiples of up to 20.
In this photo above, students are tied with both having an equal number of chips on the board. The one who knocks the other student’s chips off the board first is the winner. What makes this game fun is that there is an element of chance when students land on the pictures, their chips are out. Also, the game requires children to know which direction to move on the board to add or subtract 10s and 1’s so they are learning at the same time.
The game is also available in color. I copied it in second grade however on colored paper, but ended up liking the black and white better because I felt the students could see the chips and numbers better on the board. The color definitely did make the game happier though.
How Can You Make a Life Sized Hundred’s Chart Cheaply?
At the last NCTM conference, I went to a session about “The Learning Carpet” which is a giant 10×10 grid. This life size grid helps students see number patterns on a 100’s chart. To actually buy one it costs around $300. The presenter told us that she started out with a tarp to make hers before she had the carpets manufactured. Intrigued with the multiple ways the carpet could be used, we set out to teach people about the carpet in our own district and make our own. Several of us made them with small patterned duct tape. They took us about 3 hours to make, and it works best if you have help. Each square is 6 1/2 inches wide. On the real “Learning Carpet” the lines in the middle of the squares are 1/2 inch wide, but the duct tape we used is over an inch wide. There are number and letter cards that go with the mat which we made as well on card stock. One of our teachers took the initiative to get together before school started to make the “learning tarps” so we could help each other. To buy the tarp and duct tape it costed us about $30. Which is the better buy? Hmmmm…you do the math! Below are our results.
Turquoise and pink chevrons…wooo!
Yellow and paint splatters…
Orange and bubble design…
As you can see from this photo, it is easiest to lay all the horizontal stripes first and then go back and lay the vertical stripes.
I tried to make a learning carpet a different way just to see if it would work…my little experiment! I built a stencil from a piece of poster board and spray painted the stencil on a full size sheet. To make the stencil, I cut the 1/2 inch outlines away from the squares while leaving a little piece of poster board attached to the squares so that the stencil wouldn’t fall apart. The stencil is the green rectangle with paint on it that you see lying on the sheet.
I just moved the stencil and lined it up each time I spray painted to repeat the pattern. Towards the end I started getting several smudges since the stencil was getting soaked with paint. Sturdier cardboard may have worked out better. Two cans of spray paint are necessary to paint all the squares on the sheet. The total cost for the poster board, the sheet, and the spray paint was about $20. Although the spray paint/sheet method was messier, it is much easier to create this project alone than stretching the tape exactly straight with the tarp method. Plus you can easily throw the sheet in the washer when it accumulates too much kid dirt!
A few paint fumes later…my finished product!
If you truly wanted to have a learning carpet, this stencil method would work to spray paint a carpet remnant with low pile as well.
Read my original post about “The Learning Carpet” to find out more about how this can be used in your classroom.
Fun and Easy Tool to Teach Number Sense for Kinesthetic Learners
Here is my absolute favorite session from NCTM (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics). The presenter was a lady from Canada who brought The Learning Carpet for us to see. The learning carpet is a 10 by 10 grid of empty squares that you can use for many things, but it is especially useful for a large 100’s chart.
The number cards are 6 1/2 inches square and made out of card stock. Students in groups of five can see how fast they can place the number cards on the carpet. This can be easily differentiated by giving the easier numbers to the struggling learners and the larger numbers to the students who need a challenge.
Students can also be asked to pick up the numbers whose digits makes sums of 10 or any number. Students will start to see patterns such as how different sums follow diagonals. I felt dumb when she showed us this because I had never noticed that the sums make diagonals.
In the above picture you can see the gray squares on the mat. You could easily make this on a tarp with paint or tape to show the number boxes. The gray boxes are 6 1/2 inches and the black stripes on the grid lines are 1/2 an inch. If I made one of these carpets, I would make the squares actually bigger so that feet could more easily fit inside the boxes. I ordered the book with all the games that you can play so I could make my own if I wanted. Next year, there may be money in the budget to actually purchase some of the carpets.
The amazing thing about the fact that there are no numbers on the grid actually teaches more number sense. Students are made to think about number relationships to find spaces on the grid. If asked to find any number on the blank grid students have to understand the relationships between the numbers. For example, if trying to find 57 on the grid, students will know that all the sevens are in a column so that 57 will be in the column with sevens. A marker can be thrown on the grid and then students have to tell what number space that it landed on. They can walk on the carpet to help them figure it out.
The grid can be used for bar graphs or coordinate grids. The grid can also be used for area and perimeter like below.
There are so many fun activities you can do with this carpet, and I love the idea of the students actually being able to get up and stand on it to be involved. If you want to order the resources you can buy learning carpets and resources here. The kindergarten teacher who designed these is in Canada, and this is the only place you can buy them. They don’t sell through a larger distributor like Amazon etc. I have no stock in these, I just think that it is a great idea whether you order the ones she makes or make your own.
You Will Need These to Help Your Students Count Past 100…
I made the Hundreds Chart Number Cards to 1200 to push our second and third grade students towards counting higher numbers. I found a need for a chart that extended past 100 or even 300 after doing some basic counting assessing with students. This year, we gave all of the students in grades 1-5 a counting assessment to see how high they could count. We asked them how high they thought they could count. Following this question, we had them start counting by ones starting ten back from that number. So for example, if a student said they could count to 200, we had them begin counting at 190 and count until they made an error. We noted the number they counted to and their errors. Doing this proved very revealing, and helped me know where a lot of misconceptions about basic number sense are occurring. Now I am seeing a need to continue practicing counting and exploring patterns past 1000. Some students can count to 1000, or even 1009, but have difficulty after 1009 or 1099. They often think 2000 is the next number. That is why I have made these numbers to give teachers a tool to help explore these patterns up to and past 1000. I specifically created this set of numbers for third graders who are having just this difficulty but this could be used with any grade level K-5.
How the Hundreds Chart Number Cards can be used:
When students have learned to count 1-100, higher numbers may be placed on the hundreds chart to recognize patterns and generate discussion. For example, you may decide to place numbers 51-150 on the chart so students can practice counting past the 100 century. Also, you may put 3 hundreds charts together on top of each other in your classroom and begin with 1-300 so students can see patterns among different centuries. When students have learned 1-300, the cards may be replaced with higher numbers such as 301-600, 601 -900, and so on.
The Hundreds Charts Numbers may be used in a variety of ways. Use the numbers for daily counting and number recognition. The numbers may also be used for other activities. For example, remove some of the numbers from the chart and hand them out to students to put back into the empty spaces. In order for students to place the number back in the chart, they must explain the pattern they used to place the number. The cards may also be used for pattern recognition of multiples or even/odd numbers. If copying lots of color is not a problem, the red and white cards are provided for pattern recognition. For an ink saving version, use the black and white version to copy multiples on different colored card stock.
These will fit in the hundreds pocket chart you may already own. Just click the picture below. This will take you to TPT to download the numbers.
Running Out of Counting Activities?
To help students master common core standards in K-2 such as:
- K.CC.1. Count to 100 by ones and by tens.
- K.CC.2. Count forward beginning from a given number within the known sequence (instead of having to begin at 1).
- K.CC.3. Write numbers from 0 to 20. Represent a number of objects with a written numeral 0-20 (with 0 representing a count of no objects).
- 1.NBT.1. Count to 120, starting at any number less than 120. In this range, read and write numerals and represent a number of objects with a written numeral.
- 2.NBT.2. Count within 1000; skip-count by 5s, 10s, and 100s.
I developed a set of number charts with missing numbers and number chart puzzles to help students see patterns, become more proficient with number recognition, and become more proficient at counting. Pictured below is a picture I snapped of a kindergarten student putting together the 1-80 chart. Our school district decided to increase the numbers that students learn in kindergarten each quarter instead of working towards 100 the 1st quarter. This quarter our pacing guide says students should learn to count to 75, so students are completing a 1-80 puzzle. When using these puzzles with small children it is necessary to model this otherwise students will cut out each number. If you would like to sample the number charts and puzzles, there are a few pages for FREE on TPT–just download the preview.
