Educational Resources

1 - The Learning Resource for Addition: An Addition Mat

This resource was created from handmade templates, drawn onto coloured card and then cut out.  The resulting shapes were glued onto a sheet of A2 cardboard, in order to create a setting for the addition mat. The chosen theme for this addition mat is the Teddy Bears’ Picnic, modelled after the song by John Walter Bratton. This particular theme was chosen as it is universal and allows for inclusion in a larger unit of work, encompassing other subject areas such as music, literacy and art. The concept of addition is demonstrated by the child joining two groups of different types of ‘Teddy Bear’s into one group.

2 - The Purpose of the Addition Mat

The purpose of the addition mat is to aid children in their development of the concept of addition, where the concept of addition is defined as: the joining of two or more groups of things to find how many things there are altogether (Gregory, 2013). This is achieved with the addition mat by students physically combining two groups of distinctly different objects – in this case, teddy bears, and observing that they have made one group. “Children need to have many experiences in problem situations and in working with physical objects to develop understanding about mathematical operations. Understanding improves if they can relate mathematical facts and symbols to an experience they can visualise.” (Reys, 2012, pp. 197). The addition mat provides a relatable setting for this, as students place bears into a picnic setting, and are using the teddy bears as addition tools, which are a more familiar and concrete item, rather than counters that students may have more difficulty relating to at this stage. When using the language model for mathematics with the addition mat, the first tier of language should be used initially (Gregory, 2013), the child’s language. The child’s language is words, phrases and situations that the child is already familiar with or can conceptualise. Phrases such as ‘Four teddy bears went to the picnic, and three more came along. How many bears are there altogether?’ are appropriate. As seen in the Australian Curriculum, the Number and Algebra strand from the Foundation Year Content Descriptions states that  in the foundation year it is expected that students “represent practical situations to model addition and sharing” (ACARA, n.d.). The addition mat provides a medium for children to achieve this, by providing concrete objects to facilitate children’s sharing and adding of objects. Regarding this, the expected student learning outcomes in this activity would be that students join up to two groups that equal up to twenty objects together to find a total after using the addition mat.

3 - Using the Addition Mat to Facilitate Learning