This Year 2 'How can we add numbers?' series of lessons are a great way to get your Year 2 children practising and improving their addition skills. At the beginning of the week, the lessons focus on using concrete representations to add two and three groups of objects together, then move on to using number lines to add two and three numbers together. Towards the end of the week, the lessons progress to adding ten to two-digit numbers using bead strings, hundred squares, and mental strategies. Children will also have opportunities to add other multiples of ten to two-digit numbers using the same methods.

This scheme of work has everything you need, including engaging slides, differentiated activities, number games and more, to keep your Year 2s busy adding numbers and learning new addition strategies.

Adding two and three groups

The first lesson in this series focuses on using pictorial representations to add two and three numbers together.

Your children will begin by adding two groups of objects and then move on to adding three groups together.

Your class will begin to understand that starting with the largest group and then adding the smaller groups can be a good strategy to use.

Using Number Lines

Your children will use number lines in this lesson to firstly add two numbers together and then three.

Explore how to use a number line with your class and show them how to make jumps to the right along the number line to add numbers.

Challenge your children to take this strategy one step further and add thee numbers together on the number line.

Using Bead Strings

Your class will use bead strings in this lesson to become more familiar with multiples of ten and how to add them to numbers.

This lesson focusses on adding ten and twenty to two-digit numbers by counting on beads on a bead string and adding it to the starting number.

Challenge your class to use their addition facts to ten to see patterns on the bead string as they add ten.

Using a Hundred Square

Continue adding multiples of ten to two-digit numbers in this lesson, but this time using a hundred square instead of bead strings.

Your children will enjoy seeing the pattern on the hundred square when they add ten to a number. They will begin to see that the tens column changes and the ones column stays the same when adding ten.Challenge your class to add twenty, thirty, forty and fifty to numbers on a hundred square!

Mental Addition

The final lesson in this scheme of work gives your children time to consolidate all they have learnt in the previous four lessons.

Challenge them to use their mental addition skills to add multiples of ten to two-digit numbers as quickly as they can, showing what they know about adding ten to numbers.