Max Maths, Year 2, Learn together, Addition review

In the Max Maths programme for Year 2, students are encouraged to review and strengthen their addition skills through mental maths exercises. One such exercise involves adding bottles of mustard and ketchup together in their heads. This particular task presents a scenario where they must add 6 and 9. To simplify the mental calculation, the strategy of regrouping is employed. The number 6 is broken down into 5 and 1, allowing the students to easily create a sum of 10 by adding the 1 to the 9. This method of regrouping not only simplifies the addition process but also helps students to quickly identify number pairs that sum to 10, a foundational skill in developing mental arithmetic fluency.

The exercise demonstrates the process step-by-step, showing how the number 6 is separated into 5 and 1, and then the 1 is added to 9, resulting in the number 10. This new sum of 10 is then effortlessly added to the remaining 5, yielding a total of 15. This approach to addition, which emphasizes the creation of 'friendly' numbers like 10, is a key strategy taught in the Max Maths curriculum. It encourages students to think flexibly about numbers and to use strategies that make calculations easier to manage mentally, thereby enhancing their overall number sense and arithmetic skills.