I am so proud of my second graders and how far they have come in the last few weeks.  They started subtraction needing to use base ten blocks to solve 24 - 9 = ? and now they can solve problems like this 345 – 263 = ? without blocks.  They have realized that numbers can be written in many different ways and that helped them to realize that subtraction isn’t so scary.  For example

 

  345

 -263

            Both of these are ways to represent 345, but the second one makes it easier to solve.

             345

 

300      40      5          3 hundreds, 4 tens, 5 ones

200    140       5         2 hundreds, 14 tens, 5 ones

 

It is a great way to use place value to transition them to the standard algorithm without them losing the number sense related to what they are doing.

 

 

  345

 -263