Once children are familiar with using dienes apparatus, they should quickly move to recording their workings using jottings. This gives children the ability to find the answer without using apparatus. This method is shown below:

As with addition, the bar model provides a strong visual representation to support subtraction in the context of real world problems. Each number within the problem is represented by a bar, showing the unknown total as a blank bar. This is also reinforced through the use of Cuisenaire rods to mirror the bar model. The jottings method can be used to find the answer.

This time, the unknown answer represents the “difference” between the 2 amounts in the calculation.

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