Take a Penny and Take Regrouping Out of Subtraction

"Take a Penny" is a 2 step strategy that allows students to subtracting across zeros without having to go through the complicated steps of regrouping. In fact with "Take a Penny", students can subtract across zeros without regrouping at ALL!

I learned the "Take a Penny" strategy last summer, and it has transformed the way my students subtract. I was at one of those workshops that you really don't want to be at but are required to go to, and boy was I amazed. The man that came to talk to us knew exactly how it felt to be in our shoes and did not waste one second of our time. 


He taught us all kinds of strategies to make learning about math not only easier but fun. He only talked to us for two days, but I swear I would have sat there for a week just to learn more ways to help children understand and comprehend math in ways that we have never heard of. 


I have used many of his strategies this past year, but the one that has had the most monumental change is the "Take a Penny" strategy. I actually feel like I have cheated my past classes by not teaching them this strategy. Not only is it faster, but because there are less steps students rarely make mistakes. 

And it works every time, no matter how many zeros you have. The reason it works is quite simple. When you are subtracting two numbers, you are finding the difference between them or how far apart they are. When you "Take a Penny", you are not changing the distance between the two numbers because you are doing the same thing to both numbers. You are just make it easier to find the distance between the numbers.

I created a 23 slide PowerPoint presentation to help students and teachers master this innovative strategy. This product introduces how to "take a penny" and then provides an abundance of practice in working subtraction problems that require regrouping across zeroes using this extremely innovative strategy. Check it out at my TpT store.  I promise that it will forever change the way you and your students subtract!

Sinister Subtraction

I don't know about y'all, but in all my years of teaching I have yet to find something as difficult for students as subtraction. It is the one concept students will have one day and lose the next. In fact, sometimes they will work one problem correctly and when they get to the next one they completely lose it.

Yet, subtraction is one of the most important concepts students must master. Without it, figuring out change, calculating elapsed time, dividing and countless other skills are out the window. The one way to make sure that the concept of subtraction sticks is by making sure students understand the "Why?" of subtraction.

I am frequently asked by parents, "What happened to borrowing? Why is it called regrouping now?" Well, when you borrow something like a shirt that shirt doesn't change. It is still a shirt and eventually (hopefully) you return it. When you are "borrowing" with subtraction, you are never giving anything back to the tens or hundreds place where you took it from, and you are changing that ten or hundred into something else like ones. In other words, regrouping what you took into something totally different.

I spent many hours creating a PowerPoint presentation demonstrating the different ways students can subtract to solve problems. Some of these methods incorporate strategies from Singapore Math. Other methods have been gleamed from countless workshops and conferences. And some I found while scouring the Internet for ways to help make subtraction easier for students.

The four methods I teach students are:
1. Drawing (With this method, students do not even need to know their facts. It works really well with students who have a hard time remembering their basic math facts.)
2. Old School (The way we learned it, but with a few twists)
3. Take a Penny (This method has revolutionized my methods of subtracting across zeroes as well as my students.)
4. Fair is Fair (This works really well with 2 and 3 digit numbers and keeps students from having to regroup.)

Check out my Subtraction With and Without Regrouping at my TpT store. In the presentation, which I use over a 9 day period, I insert several videos that help illustrate the different methods.