Help Grade 2 students master 2-digit addition with regrouping using fun printable worksheets, practice pages, word problems, and kid-friendly math activities.
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2-Digit Addition Practice — Tens, Ones, and When to Carry
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The printable gives you five pages of 2-digit sums, and none of them need carrying. That is worth noticing rather than taking for granted — so this page teaches the trick for telling, before you start, whether a sum will make you carry at all.
Tens and ones
A 2-digit number is just tens and ones. 13 + 74 is 10 + 3 and 70 + 4. Add the tens (10 + 70 = 80), add the ones (3 + 4 = 7), put them back together: 87.
The ones-column test. Look at the two ones digits and add just those. If they come to 10 or more, you will have to carry. If they come to 9 or less, you will not. Every sum in this pack passes the test — try it and see.
Question 1
Split 13 + 74 into tens and ones. What do the tens come to?
80. 10 and 70. The ones come to 7, and 80 + 7 = 87.
Question 2
So what is 13 + 74?
87. 80 + 7. Adding the tens first keeps the numbers easy — you never deal with more than one column at a time.
Question 3 — select all that apply
Use the ones-column test. Select every sum that will need carrying, then press Check.
38 + 25, 47 + 29, 56 + 18 need carrying: 8 + 5 = 13; 7 + 9 = 16; 6 + 8 = 14. The others have ones digits adding to 9 or less, so they do not — 13 + 74 gives 3 + 4 = 7, for instance.
Question 4
A student lines up 70 + 29 by the left edge instead of by place value, and gets 162. What did they add to what?
They mixed the columns up. Place value is the whole point of lining sums up on the right: ones under ones, tens under tens. 70 + 29 = 99.
Question 5
What is 31 + 47?
78. Tens: 70. Ones: 1 + 7 = 8. No carrying needed, and the ones-column test told you so before you started.
Question 6 — put them in order
Click these in order, from the smallest total to the largest.
13 + 46 = 59 < 31 + 47 = 78 < 63 + 16 = 79 < 70 + 29 = 99. You can often order them by the tens alone: 13 + 46 has 5 tens and 70 + 29 has 9, which settles those two without touching the ones.
Think about it
Try the ones-column test on 48 + 35. Will you need to carry?
Why do you line sums up on the right instead of the left?
13 + 74 and 74 + 13 give the same answer. Does the tens-and-ones method work either way round?
None of the sums in this pack need carrying. Make up one that does, and one that does not.