Addition and Subtraction are fundamental operations that are used in our daily life irrespective of the fact whether the individual has attended school.
In addition to, pragmatic aspects of addition and subtraction these are fundamental as addition and subtraction is cognitively related to the sense of more or less. In fact, the sense of more or less, big or small is a pre-requisite of understanding of addition and subtraction.
So, before introducing addition and subtraction, teachers must give students experience of comparing quantities, or size to abstract the sense of more or less, big or small....
Ask students to which packet has more balls.
Here, we believe that rather than taking these concepts separately one must use activities that developed sense of addition and subtraction simultaneously. As both are cognitively related to each other. Let us understand this by a small activity. Ask Students to play a game in pairs. Take a die and roll it one by one. If one gets 1,or 3 on the top of die their score will be decreased by 1 or 3 respectively and if got 2, 4, 5, 6 they earn points 2 , 4, 5 and 6 respectively. The one who scores 100 first will be the winner.
While playing the game learners will be engaged in addition as 'counting on' or an increase in number and also make sense of subtraction as decrease in number. learners also understand that 3+2 =5 and 5-3=2 or 5-2=3. At any step You can also ask students to write the number facts involved. It may be noted that writing number facts is an important step in internalizing the new understanding, make sense of addition and subtraction and relation between them.
This will help students while solving word problems and situations in order to choose the correct operation. These activities contextualize the abstract mathematical concepts and make it available to conceptual reach of students.
It is suggested to start with small numbers and gradually take bigger ones as students' difficulty doesn't lie in understanding of addition or subtraction but applying it to bigger numbers. Student can correctly answer that 5 is bigger than 2 by ___3_ ? but can't tell 55 is greater than 23 by ----? Hence, the teacher should start from smaller numbers and then move on to bigger numbers.
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