Have you been looking for fun ways for students to practise their basic addition facts? This interactive PowerPoint does away with printables and gives students the opportunity to work on their addition skills using a digital device.

This resource includes hidden photographs of some very cute animals! While students are busily adding numbers, they also become intrigued about the image lying beneath the number sentences. This is a guessing game and addition practice rolled into one!

Students are presented with an equation that they need to solve. At the bottom of the screen there are several answers to choose from. Students click on their answer of choice. If they are correct, the equation disappears, revealing a section of a photograph beneath. At the same time, a new equation appears. If the student’s answer is incorrect, the button does not click, allowing them to try again. Little by little, as students find the answers, the photograph is revealed.

Which Addition Facts Are Covered?

There are three differentiated slides in this PowerPoint, which is mainly directed at the Year 1 level.

• The first slide includes addition facts to 10.
• The second slide includes addition facts to 20.
• The third slide challenges students to add multiples of 10 (less than 100), and to add single-digit numbers to two-digit numbers (less than 30).

In What Ways Could This Resource Be Used?

The key to building mental calculation skills is repetition. Add a little mystery to the task of reinforcing addition skills with this interactive game.

This PowerPoint could be played individually, in small groups or as a class. It could be used as a warm-up maths game to begin a lesson or as a quick consolidation at the end of a lesson. Try challenging your students further by including a timing component. Allocate a time frame within which students must solve the equations on a slide.

Make sure you view the presentation in ‘Slide Show’ mode to experience the full ‘revelation’!

If you’re looking for more resources to reinforce basic addition skills, try these:

teaching resource

Addition Maze – Bike Ride Worksheet

A worksheet to use to practise finding missing addends.

teaching resource

Missing Addend Addition Picture Puzzle – Level 1

Build simple addition skills with this missing addends worksheet.