How would your year 2 child subtract 74 from 90?

[janinlondon]

Title says it all really. What method is your school using for this kind of simple subtraction?

my year 2 DS would start from 74 and count to 90 using his fingers to get the difference.

Message withdrawn

going to post you a link to a gab booklet that tells you about methods

click on the 4th and 5th link in the list and download

It is all about building on simple mental methods and building on understanding the aths behind what you are doing rather than just learning method X or Y by rote

thanks for the link, really informative. If they already know how to use columns, are they allowed to use them? (DD Y1 and has just started using columns at home)

We've just been to a talk about Numeracy at DD's school and there were a few methods mentioned, just like on here.

The biggest thing that's struck me about the whole primary maths thing though is that the books teach them to put the mathematical sign on the wrong side of the sum i.e

862 x18

when I'm sure we used to do

862 18 x

or

973 221 +

so that you didn't mistake the sign for a number in your calculation.

Also not supposed to teach children to 'borrow one and pay it back'. Some parents complain their children are being taught too many different strategies and some parents feel the more ways you can be shown to manipulate the numbers, the easier it will probably be in the future.

Interesting to hear on here that columns will probably make a return.

Bum, that second calc, there should be a space before the 18 but it's not shown up.

formal column addition and subtraction startegies aren't introduced till year 4/5.

I think finding the difference with a number line would be how most would tackle it.

ROFL! Read this as "2 year old" and not "year 2".

blimey. it's taken me 5 minutes of reading this thread to work out that it's about year 2 kids, not 2 year olds. I was wondering (and serioulsy doubting) if my 4 year old could do this sum, wondering how come everyone was responding instead of saying wtf and a tiny bit of me was inwardly panicking.

that's 2 of us then Mrs Spoon. I was totally aghast at the fact that there were answers!

What age is year 2? My DD is in primary 2 (age 6) and would probably do this by sutracting the 70 and then the 4. I'm not sure it would be expected of her at this stage though.

LOL hatwoman, my 7 year old would be struggling, never mind my four year old!

more formal methods of written calculations are introduced in year 5.....

and the 'borrowing and pay one back' method of subtraction was gone even when I was at school....and I am nearly 33

Ds1 (age7) is in P3 (Scotland) so third year of school. They have done nothing like this at all - just started adding in columns. When I asked him he added 6 on to make 80, then up to 90.

Many thanks to everyone for contributing to this thread. After a chat with the teacher it seems that column-based subtraction on paper will be introduced formally to the children after Christmas, so that's the way we have gone. Next term we hit the big three digit numbers, so I'm kind of glad!