Teaching addition and subtraction...at the same time?????

Have you ever tried to teach addition and subtraction at the same time? I was looking over 1st grade CC standards and re-doing my curriculum map. Ummm....was that supposed to be done all of last year, month by month?  Oops. Maybe.

Anyway, I noticed how so many of the standards would almost have to be split into addition and subtraction, at least in the math content area. You'd be basically using the same standard on your map twice, which is fine and happens a lot, but as a matter of teaching, I thought maybe it would be better to teach both processes together. So I tried doing some research on teaching addition and subtraction at the same time. There wasn't much out there. Maybe for good reason. Maybe this is a terrible idea. But I'm gonna try it. At least for the first 4 weeks. Here's my plan.

Wouldn't it be easier to compose and decompose numbers together? Couldn't we just do that as a whole group and then break it down into addition and subtraction number sentences, right from the get-go? Wouldn't that give them a greater understanding of numbers? Wouldn't that lead to a better understanding of word problems and fact families?

I still plan to use 6 main strategies:
1.Count on
2. Count back
3. Doubles
4. Doubles plus 1
5. Making 10
6. Adding multiples of 10

We will also learn the 4 basic types of problems:
1. join
2. separate
3. part-part-whole
4.compare

I plan to use many, many different types of manipulatives to compose and decompose. I also noticed in my plan that I didn't have anything written about introducing writing subtraction sentences. I have to add that. It will take me much longer this year to get through all of those 6 strategies. But I think that's ok. It will ensure that they are solid in their understanding.

I really want to take some time to plan this out well. I'll keep you posted.


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