On the first day of teaching subtraction with regrouping, one student began explaining his own way of solving problems so that he didn't have to regroup - he could use mental strategies instead. I listened intently as he showed us how he worked through a problem. At first, I thought it was a fluke! Then, I realized this strategy would work well with almost any subtraction problem. The students have loved Matthew's method! In Matthew's strategy, he makes the initial problem easier to solve by forcing his first answer to be a "nice" number. From there, he uses several different strategies including counting up, counting down, and mental math. This plan works best with 2 and 3 digit numbers because the subtraction becomes difficult with more complex numbers.
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