Max Maths, Year 6, Learn together, Mental addition and subtraction (1)

In the 'Max Maths' curriculum for Year 6, students are encouraged to enhance their mental addition and subtraction skills through a series of exercises. One such exercise involves adding together the values on price tags without the use of paper or calculator. For instance, when faced with price tags of $520 and $370, students like Han recognise that both numbers are multiples of ten. He simplifies the task by first adding the numbers without their final zero—52 and 37—resulting in 89. He then multiplies this sum by 10 to account for the zeros he initially disregarded, arriving at the total of $890.

Another example provided for mental arithmetic involves larger numbers that are multiples of 100, such as 2,600 and 4,500. Students are taught to initially ignore the last two zeros and simply add 26 and 45, which equals 71. Afterward, they reintroduce the two zeros by multiplying by 100, which gives them the final sum of 7,100. This method effectively demonstrates how understanding place value can simplify complex addition problems, allowing students to solve them mentally with ease. It's a practical technique that helps students to quickly and accurately add large numbers by shifting digits in the place-value table.