I've always had trouble teaching this strategy, until NOW! Thanks to some AHH-MAZING bloggers out there, I have learned some tips and tricks for teaching this strategy with students.
To start, I make sure my students have a good understanding of place value before I teach the regrouping strategy. I am SUCH a stickler for making sure my students understand WHY a strategy works before I teach it. I am usually so afraid to teach this "old school" way of solving subtraction because many times kids don't get why it works the way it does. That's why I was SO EXCITED to find an idea for using MANIPULATIVES!
Check out how the amazing Angie at Lucky Little Learners uses manipulatives to teach subtraction with regrouping:
I LOVE this because you are able to break apart the groups of ten. In the past, I've used base-ten blocks. It is so hard for kids to exchange a group of tens for ones...ugh! Thanks, Angie. This was MUCH better!
Next, it's all about practice, practice, practice. I had my kids work in partners: One student would use the unifix cubes and mat (from the tutorial above) to solve a problem and the other would track the steps on a mini whiteboard. After each turn, they would switch. We spent a long time on this, but it was SO worth it!
After some time with manipulatives, then they were ready to practice on paper. I had trouble finding a practice page with space large enough for students to show their work, so I made my own. You can grab your own FREE copy below!
In addition, I offered QR codes with tutorials and songs for students to use if they needed additional support:
Download this resource HERE!
To wrap it all up, I showed students WHY we learn this strategy by explaining that it is the quickest way to solve subtraction problems with REALLY, REALLY big numbers. To prove it, I listed a ridiculous problem with numbers in the millions and zipped through the strategy to solve it. They were AMAZED and couldn't wait to learn more!
I just love ending lessons like that. :-)
