What Is the “Make a Ten Strategy” in Math?
The “make a ten Strategy” or the “making ten strategy” is a mathematical strategy where you add numbers to make a sum of ten.
The “making 10 strategy” involves changing one of the numbers in an Addition problem into the number 10 in order to make the calculation easier.
It is a very useful strategy to help kids understand basic addition, compensation strategy, and number sense. It is also called friends of 10, making ten, making 10, make-10, different ways to make 10, or combinations to ten.
Dealing with the number 10 is always easy. We always rely on our 10 fingers when counting or when taking away one number from another. As we use the decimal number system (number system with base 10), the number 10 has a very significant role in all the arithmetic operations that we carry out on numbers.
Example: Let’s find 7 + 6.
Adding 3 to 7 will make it 10.
7 + 3 = 10.
This 3 comes from the second number, 6.
So, 6 – 3 = 3.
Now, we can represent this as
7 + 6 = (7 + 3) + 3 = 10 + 3 = 13
Thus, 7 + 6 = 13.