Regrouping? Is it the hardest concept ever to teach or does it just feel like it?

My firsties and I have been working on addition and subtraction to 100, with and without regrouping for about a week now. For the most part, addition is going well. It seems like the trickiest thing is keeping everything in line in the ones and tens column. Well, I take that back. Having students rewrite a horizontal problem, like 32+6, into a vertical format and actually write the 6 in the ones column, well that's a feat of it's own!

Then there is subtraction...with regrouping...to 100... Wow... I did a quick check on Monday to see how everyone was doing with that. I use my little baby whiteboards that the Mr. made for me for pretty regular math quick checks. Anyway, all but 3 students had the SAME incorrect answer! Here they were subtracting the tens first, first mistake, and then they were subtracting the top number from the bottom number! Yes, we had a big talk about NOT flip flopping in a subtraction problem.

I have a good chunk of firsties who have moved out of the concrete stage and into the pictorial stage...yay! But I didn't have a good way for them to practice. Then it hit ME! I needed to create math mats that had a little extra visual cue!

We introduced them today and WOW! They were so ecstatic to hold up their mat and show me that they solved the problem, without Base 10 Blocks and independently!

Anyway, here are the pics from todays rocking regrouping lesson!

First up, addition with regrouping to 100! {Pics were taken of the television, while we worked out the problems during whole group. Gotta love the document camera!}

Next up, subtraction with regrouping to 100!

After our group instruction using these math mats, I told my firsties that I had a surprise for them! They were elated to see that they each had their own double-sided board (addition on one side and subtraction on the other) and dry erase markers with the pom-pom glued on erasers! It's so exciting to hear their cheers for math!

Do you see that bottom photo? I messed up and gave them a problem slightly bigger than 100 and you know what? More than half of my firsties figured it out correctly and wrote it correctly! When it comes to math this year, I am on cloud nine :-)

These math mats and more are available in my TpT store. Thank you for 'poking' in!

All Sorts of Math Mats

Happy Regrouping!

Until again, I wish you well!