Lesson Plan
Subtraction Towers
Help build your students subtraction skills by finding the unknown! This lesson will help your students understand the relationship between addition and subtraction, as students build towers to find unknown addends.
Grade:
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Learning Objectives
Students will be able to subtract by finding the unknown addend within a problem.
Introduction
(5 minutes)- Present a short scenario to the class. Tell the students that you were asked by a famous toy company to design some towers for a model city.
- Show the class a tower of six interlocking cubes. While holding the tower, tell the class that the current tower is too short and that the toy company said it must have a total of 11 cubes.
- To gain the class's attention, count out 11 cubes and purposely add them to the six cubes. Show the new tower to the class.
- Ask students if they think the toy company would add this tower to their toy model. Ask students to give an explanation on why or why not.