Miss Mather’s Year 6 Maths Group: Investigating Connections Within Pairs of Balanced Expressions

Miss Mather’s maths group have been investigating connections within pairs of balanced expressions. We began with pairs of expressions that only used the operator of subtraction.

We used the phrase, “Whatever the connection between or minuends, (or subtrahends- depending on what we have both of) we do the same to our subtrahends (or minuends).” The children were then asked to investigate, with their partner, if the same rule applies when both expressions contain an addition operator, using the terminology “first addend” and “second addend” to describe the mathematics. Having identified the mathematical structure (how the maths works), we will now begin to apply this to other balanced expressions, using different numbers, including larger numbers, negative numbers and decimals.