Do you wonder where fact families are found in the current standards? The fact is, current standards don’t actually mention fact families at all anymore. Instead, they refer to “the relationship between operations.” An understanding of this...
Composing and decomposing numbers is critical learning for Kindergarteners and 1st Graders. This is something that needs to be practiced all year long as students master the combinations first for 5, then 6, then 7, etc. And, of course, they won’t all progress...
Part/whole thinking begins in Kindergarten when students are expected to learn the number combinations for the numbers through 10. Below you see a graphic representation for the combinations for 5. These are often called number bonds. This is a year-long process as...
In her book How Children Learn Number Concepts*, Kathy Richardson devotes an entire chapter to composing and decomposing numbers. It may surprise you that the title of the chapter is Understanding Addition and Subtraction: Parts of Numbers. This quote sums it up...
After spending several weeks exploring number bonds, this week I’ve been working with my firsties on composing and decomposing 5. This has been such a fun week as we used three highly engaging activities to practice combinations. On Friday, I asked the kiddos if...
