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I wish I'd been taught that as a child instead of the conventional method. I had no end of trouble with subtraction because we were taught ‘borrowing’, and being a moderately decent kid I always gave back what I borrowed.


I don't like the term 'carrying' because it refers to a superficial aspect of the method (that you carry the number from one place to another) rather than the essence of the operation.

The term 'borrowing' never made sense to me.

Singapore Math uses the term 'regrouping' which makes a lot more sense: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrDIf3YmNFc

When you add, 15+6, you add 5+6 to get 11, and then you regroup the 11 ones into 1 ten and 1 one.

When you subtract 21-6, you regroup the 2 tens into 1 ten and 10 ones. With the original 1 one, you now have 11 ones. Then you subtract the 6 from the 11 ones to get 5 as the last digit.


Interestingly, my 5yo insisted on the symmetry of calling the operation “carrying” in both directions.




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