From facts to borrowing
- Within 10 and 20. Subtraction facts, like 13 – 5, a whole sheet at a time.
- Two digits, no regrouping. Every top digit is big enough: subtract the ones, then the tens.
- Two digits with regrouping. When the top ones digit is smaller, take one ten and make ten more ones.
- Three digits. The same steps across tens and hundreds.
Check by adding
Every subtraction has an addition hiding in it: if 72 – 38 = 34, then 34 + 38 = 72. Children who check their answers this way catch their own mistakes and learn how the two operations fit together. The addition worksheetsuse the same levels.
Irish curriculum links
- InfantsStage 1: taking away makes a quantity smaller, and subtraction undoes addition.
- 1st–2nd ClassStage 2: subtraction can mean taking away, finding the missing part or finding the difference, and sometimes a ten must be exchanged for units.
- 3rd–4th ClassStage 3 uses the same exchanging with hundreds and larger numbers, with all four operations used flexibly.
In Irish classrooms you may hear “exchanging” or “renaming” as well as the older “borrowing”. The NCCA toolkit talks about exchanging a ten for ten units, which is what the regrouping problems on these sheets practise.
Some parents learned a different written method, often called borrowing and paying back. If a child brings that method from home, the answer will match; only the working looks different, so agree as a school which method to teach.
Summarised in our own words from the Primary Mathematics Curriculum (2023) and the NCCA Mathematics Toolkit.
