Addition Worksheets PDF

Tips for Teaching Addition

Addition of numbers starts from a very young age. Parents should be supporting their children to learn basic counting in everyday life:

• counting the stairs as you walk up them

• counting blocks, crayons, and other toys

• counting in the supermarket

It may be obvious to some, but probably the best place to start counting is with the child's own fingers. From there you can move on to other concrete examples such as using blocks, lollies/sweets, marbles, etc. Combine two quantities by using groups of objects e.g. 3 blocks plus 2 blocks.

Visual aids are extremely useful when teaching addition. Visualising the numbers in terms of everyday items can help children understand the concepts.

Number lines are also extremely useful and remove the need for students to count out the first number. For example, if the question is 5 + 3 then some students will need to count out the 5 and then add the 3. This is by no means a waste of time, but having a number line available so that students can identify 5 and then add 3 will help to quickly build basic number addition facts. Encourage students to start with the biggest number and then count on from there.

Using repetition is extremely useful as it helps children build fluency with basic number addition facts. These number bonds become important when moving on to subtraction.

Encourage mental mathematics as far as possible. Developing mental maths skills from an early age can help boost confidence in their ability and will deepen recall of addition number facts. What do I mean by this? As adults, we know facts such as 8 + 7 = 15. We no longer need to calculate 8 + 7. It has become a fact after years of recall. For children learning basic number bonds, we can encourage them to practise recall so that they can also begin to reduce the need to count using fingers or other aids.