St. Alphonsus ECS

Zoo Animal Subtraction

Once we had mastered the basics of addition, we were ready to face a new challenge- subtraction. First, we practiced with a pile of zoo animals. We each took turns verbalizing a subtraction equation- if I have _ zoo animals and I take _ away, how many do I have left? Each student then reenacted these statements. We quickly mastered the language, and decided to make things a little more difficult.

Each student was given a laminated strip of paper, and several zoo animal stickers. They attached the stickers to the laminated strip and wrote their equations with dry erase markers underneath. By using laminated papers, the students were able to use the same stickers multiple times until they had all mastered the task.