Mental Addition - The Complete Series (5 lessons)

With detailed lesson plans, slides, worksheets, question cards and much more, these 'Mental Addition' resources provide everything you need to teach this encouraging and challenging scheme of work.

The first lesson in this series warms their brains up by challenging them to add single digits and multiples of ten and a hundred mentally to three-digit numbers. The slides go through some examples for children to solve in their heads, before either working on some speed challenges individually or with a partner.

This lesson challenges children to use their mental addition skills to solve a variety of word problems. Using the ‘rucsac’ model to support their learning, children will have to identify what the question is asking them. The questions have some unimportant information to try and catch them out! The activities challenge children to match problems to the correct answer, or use calculation statements to come up with some word problems of their own.

Some confused characters with different answers to a question provide the context for children to use the inverse to check the accuracy of an addition calculation. Using a number line, children will learn how to check their work (both for addition and subtraction problems) on the slides before having a go for themselves.

This lesson teaches your class to solve addition and subtraction problems using money. Some useful strategies are outlined in the slides to give your class some practise during the teaching input, before solving some problems that involve adjusting prices by a certain amount.

After some quick-fire addition questions for the children to solve mentally, the final lesson in this series challenges them to solve some missing number problems using the strategies they have learnt. As well as working out missing numbers for themselves, there is also the opportunity to create some addition calculations and hide a number to test a friend - a great opportunity to practise creating accurate number sentences as well as solving missing number problems!