Today's lessons had the students really puzzled. For the first time ever, the second graders began their journey into learning subtraction with regrouping (those of you who are older would know this process as "borrowing") . The students used dimes and pennies to help them solve two-digit subtraction problems such as 56¢ - 12¢ = 44¢ and so on. The students did really well with the basic subtraction concepts but once we got to problems with regrouping, the students began to struggle. The main problem the students were trying to solve is 62¢ - 27¢ and the reminder to them was that we cannot take away 7 ones from 2 ones, so we had to regroup/borrow a ten from the 6 tens or 60 portion of 62. This concept was very tricky. but I will say that although most of the students still do not understand regrouping, many of them began to understand the concept without realizing they understood.
I was very proud of the second graders today on how hard they worked to learn this brand new concept in subtraction. It was also nice to have the students work with the money manipulatives (plastic money, not real) for the first time and get use to working with them. This regrouping and subtracting with two-digit numbers is not going to go away, so next week I will be taking different approaches to help the students learn the concept. My hope is for the second graders to choose a method that works best for them, and use it! I have posted some helpful subtraction with regrouping and coin subtraction activities that you can use with your students at home.
Subtraction with Regrouping Activities
As for reading, the students read a short story called The Lion and the Mouse and then worked on another cause and effect activity that went along with the story. The students had to find either the cause of an event or the effect based on specific details from the text.
-Laura Hill
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