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The Best Mental Approaches A Child Should Take

Decent Essays

the best mental approaches a child should take. I will then progress exploring one calculation in extra detail, looking at ways to teach the problem, manipulatives I would use to support the problem and how they link to the year two national curriculum.
The addition is the first operation children learn from a young age and mastering it, is the first step toward the long-lasting appreciation of maths. Children from Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) do not need to memorise complex additions in order to become confident with basic addition. instead, teachers support children to practice counting; counting on, doubling, learning place value visually rather than mentally and encourage them to do it in different ways. They also use …show more content…

However, with subtraction calculations, this is not possible. Hence they are expected to ‘use inverse relationship between addition and subtraction to check calculations and solve missing number problems.’ (NC, 2013).
One of the approaches, which is highly recommended for children to practise, is to do addition calculations mentally (working out calculations in their head) using various strategies, which is the focus of this essay. Tony Cotton (2013, p.109) states that developing mental approaches is more efficient to work out solutions to problems and helps children to become fluent in mental calculation. However, doing mental calculations, such as addition, can be challenging and confusing for some children. Therefore, introducing appropriate strategies (for example counting on, partitioning, bridging through 10) and using them to draw images or mark-making will encourage children to ‘see’ calculations in their heads and will allow them to use the strategy which is the most suited for them (Cotton, 2013, p. 110).
Ian Thomson also suggests (I part 1 addition) that visual representation plays an important role in developing mental addition. for example, number lines help children to recognise place value and with prior knowledge of ordinal sense of numbers, it helps them to move from counting in ones to counting in larger steps, such as 2, 5, 10, 100 and so

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