Subtraction Mental Math Strategies

This week we have started to look at subtraction math strategies.  Today we talked about the strategy of one less than.  We learned that when ever you see a -1 subtraction equation the answer is automatically just one less than the first number.  To help us reinforce this strategy we played a dice game.

In groups of three most of rolled a twenty sided dice.  We then competed to say the number that was one less than what we saw on the dice.  Some of us were really fast at it, and some of us continued to improve the longer we played.  We tried to keep a tally of our scores, but most of the time we tied, so we all got points.  It was a lot of fun.

Here are a few videos of us playing the game.  Ms. Lirenman is still learning how to film so some are a  bit hard to hear but hopefully you get the idea of our game.  We are curious to see what other math games and secret math strategies we are going to learn this week.