Branching (And no, I'm not talking about trees!)

Ah yes, branching!  At first this sounded complicated but it ended up making complete sense.  First of all, what is branching?  Branching is a mental math strategy of breaking individual numbers into their hundreds, tens, and ones.  You can complete the problem by adding or subtracting once the number is broken (branched) apart:

To Add:
1.  Add the 10s
2.  Add the 1s
3.  Add 10s and 1s together

To subtract:
1.  Subtract the 10s
2.  Subtract the 1s
3.  Add 10s and 1s together

Branching is typically taught drawing everything out.  But then moves to students being able to do it using mental math.  The progression of Singapore Math is concrete --> pictorial --> abstract.  Of course, students will also learn the standard algorithm (vertical format) for solving these problems.  But it is nice to teach them how to solve these types of problems when they don't have a piece of paper and pencil handy.

If you take time to stop and think about how you would solve the problem 54 + 32, most of you would use a form of branching to solve.  Now you know the Singapore Math name for this mental math strategy!