Fig. 1: Thinking importing or Fair Trades Up in Ten Land, 8 Unit Cubes and 6 Unit Cubes are 14 Unit Cubes. Cannot have ten or more the same in Ten Land, so trade ten of the Unit Cubes for a Long, resulting in 1 Long and 4 Unit Cubes. Record the result on either side of the 6 to distinguish the Long from the Unit Cubes—to show that what was acquired in the trade would be put in the next column over on the Fair Lands™ activity board. (What the column is called—Longs or tens—is irrelevant in computation and, if emphasized, detracts from the core message to stay “safe in Ten Land—to never have ten or more the same. The only purpose served in referring to the column by name would be to direct attention to it, as with “Put what you traded for in the Longs or tens column.)

Fig. 2: 4 Unit Cubes and 9 Unit Cubes are 13 Unit Cubes. Again, cannot have ten or more the same in Ten Land, so trade ten of the Unit Cubes for a Long, resulting in 1 Long and 3 Unit Cubes. Again, record the result on either side of the 9 to distinguish the Long from the Unit Cubes. Also, record the 3 Unit Cubes that would be left on the activity board in the Unit Cubes place for the answer.

Fig. 3: Count the Longs that were acquired in adding the Unit Cubes and record the number above the problem in the Longs or tens column.

Fig. 4: 2 Longs and 5 Longs are 7 Longs. Safe! Record the 7 to the right of the 5. Since no trade was made, that is all that is recorded.

Fig. 5: 7 Longs and 7 Longs are 14 Longs. Again, cannot have ten or more the same in Ten Land, so trade ten of the Longs for a Flat, resulting in 1 Flat and 4 Longs. Again, record the result on either side of the 7 to distinguish the Flat from the Longs—to again show that what was acquired in the trade would be put in the next column over on the Fair Lands™ activity board.

Figures 6-10 illustrate the process to its conclusion: the answer—2,143. Check it with a calculator or with the standard addition algorithm for confirmation.

Shortcuts are readily apparent in Monster Addition. For instance, there was no need, really, to record the 8 for 0+8 in the Flats or hundreds column. Quicker would have been to keep adding until a trade had to be made, which occurred in the next step with 8+3=11. In other words, it would have been okay to jump from Fig. 8 to Fig. 10. MOVE IT Math™ does not teach such shortcuts. Instead, it allows students to come up with their own, which many do. That way, they are the ones being smart, and it is their math. Interestingly, students who discover shortcuts often do not realize they came up with them on their own. They think they are doing exactly what was shown them.

Monster Addition is a magic wand of sorts that turns even horribly intimidating problems—like adding ten 10-digit numbers to become certified in Monster Addition—into amazingly simple ones. It is easy to learn rotely or with understanding, the latter because what is done with the numbers is exactly what is done with Ten Land blocks on a Fair Lands™ activity board: the 1s that are recorded to the left of a number, like the 1 written to the left of 6 in Fig. 1, indicate that ten of something has been traded for one of the next bigger thing, and the digits that are recorded to the right of a number, like the 4 to the right of 6 in Fig. 1, tells how many of whatever were left over.

The only drawbacks to Monster Addition are that it requires a lot of writing, which increases the time required to work a problem, and, with all the writing, can get messy and therefore confusing. However, the increase in time is offset with the non-stressful nature of the algorithm (because one can quit working on it anywhere in the process and come back to it later and find where they left off) and way more right answers, and the problem of messiness can be dealt with, in part, by having users spread out the columns in a problem in rewriting it and by circling the 1s that show that a trade has been made to make them stand out.

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