In maths, addition stories are word problems, where an additional sum is laid out in sentences for children to decipher and solve. It helps learners to understand how addiction works in real-world situations by putting it into context and allows children to identify where the maths lies in a real-life scenario. It can help them find new meaning and importance in their school work – we all remember complaints from our school days about the uselessness of what we were learning! Silence those claims with some cool additional stories.
Addition stories are great for younger learners who are practicing simple maths. They frame sums in understandable ways, illustrating them in a way children can wrap their heads around. They also help build literacy skills by providing examples of coherent, syntactically correct sentences. Learning by example is one of the main ways young children absorb information, which is great for improving their writing.
Examples of additional stories
Max ate five biscuits in the morning. He ate four more biscuits in the afternoon. How many biscuits did he eat throughout the day?
Learners must extract the correct information from the word problem to determine the sum. They’ll realize that if they want the total of Max’s biscuits, they need to add the number he ate in the morning to the number he ate in the afternoon. So, the sum is:
5 + 4 = 9
or
Sarah has twelve apples. She buys twelve more. How many apples does Sarah have now?
Again, children will extract the correct information from the word problem – in this case, the twelve apples Sarah already had and the additional twelve she bought. So the sum is:
12 + 12 = 24
From here, children can work out the sum as they normally would, for example, by using the column method or a number line.
Converting numbers: digits to words
One of the benefits of addition stories is that children get a chance to practice converting between digits and worded numbers; this is an essential practice that can help them recognize numbers in either form and the relationship between the worded and digital iterations. In addition, this helps set them up well for life when they encounter numbers in both forms.
Story Problems
The next step, along with other stories, is story problems. Whereas addition stories always feature an addition sum at their heart, story problems could feature any operation – addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division. Again, learners will be required to read the problem and decide which operation to use, which they’ll put into practice to solve.
