Arithmetic Grade Four

Lesson Seven: Subtraction Review

Sometimes little word story problems can help you to better understand how subtraction works. Here's a little word story problem for you to consider: 

   There were eight children standing in a line. Five of
   them left the line. How many children are there remaining
   in the line?
We could represent this story problem with a picture like this:

We started with eight children as represented by the eight dots. Five of them leave as shown by the five dots which are crossed out. That leaves four dots that are not crossed out.

We could also write the following number sentence for the story problem: 
 
    8 - 5 = 4

Here's another word story problem for you to think about: 


   There were nine donuts on a large plate. Some people came
   along and ate four of them. How many donuts are left?
We could make a picture like this to represent this story problem:

Each dot represents a donut. We cross out four of them since four of them got eaten. That leaves five donuts left on the plate.

We could also write the following number sentence for the story problem: 
 
    9 - 4 = 5

Continue to next page of lesson