Help Your Child with Maths
Helping Your Child with Tens and Units (TU) – Tens and Units (TU)
All the resources on this page focus on Tens and Units subtract Tens and Units.
These are calculations that look like this:
Work through these five steps, encouraging your child to explain to you what they see happening. This helps your child to understand the process and avoids them just getting the answer right by following a ‘recipe’. Short, frequent practise helps too, so you might consider spending 15 minutes each day for a week, working through one step at a time.
1. Watch
Watch Rosie complete this calculation.
Top tip: Watch how Rosie uses practical materials to understand what is happening before she tries to solve a calculation without them.
2. Try
Try completing this calculation for yourself and then watch how Rosie does it to see how you got on.
Top tip: Notice how Rosie keeps the symbol, Tens and Units in their own columns, so that she won’t get mixed up as she works through the calculation.
3. Practise
Try completing this calculation for yourself and then watch how Rosie does it to see how you got on.
Top tip: Remember that recording your working out allows you to check what you have done when you listen back to Rosie’s working out.
4. Build Confidence
Build confidence by completing these two work cards that Rosie made for you. She thinks that you have nearly mastered this skill, so she called them ‘Nearly There’ cards.
Top tip: Lots of practise helps your brain to store the information you need to solve these calculations so that it will always be there when you need it.
5. Celebrate success
Celebrate success by completing these final calculations. Rosie says that when you really understand how to do something the ‘penny has dropped’, so this is your ‘Penny Drop’ card.
Top tip: When you master a new skill take time to think back over all the work you did along the way. You should feel proud of yourself.
These resources are useful while viewing the videos:
Cut out the Tens rods and Unit cubes and use them when you are working out your calculations.
Use this sheet when working out your calculations. It will help you to keep the symbol, tens and units in separate columns.