By the end of this lesson your child can add, subtract, multiply and divide with negative numbers, and work out which way to move before they start. Most children can tell you that −5 is a negative number. What trips them up is that −5 is smaller than −4, and that taking away a negative moves you the other way.
Topics covered:
- Numbers below zero, comparing and ordering them, including decimals like −2.5 and −2.05
- Adding and subtracting a positive, where the answer crosses zero, such as 6 − 7 and −5 + 8
- Adding and subtracting a negative, where two signs sit next to each other, such as 5 + −3 and 5 − −3
- Multiplying and dividing, with one rule that covers both, same signs give a positive and different signs give a negative
- Mixed questions and order of operations, including −4² against (−4)² and calculations like −5 + 6 × −2
Your child works through this lesson on any screen. They click to reveal each step of a worked example, try the practice questions on paper, then click to check their own answer.
How it's structured:
- Each unit opens with a worked example your child clicks through one line at a time, then practice questions colour-coded easy, medium and hard
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90 questions in total, each with a click-to-reveal answer and a reveal-all option
- A final 20-question mixed challenge pulling from all 5 units, the way negative numbers actually show up on an exam paper
Zero is the landmark most worksheets walk straight past. Counting back eight places from 5 in one go is where children lose track and end up one out. This lesson teaches your child to stop at zero on the way, so 5 − 8 becomes five steps to zero and three more after it. The number line makes that journey in two jumps on screen, and pauses at zero to ask how much further there is to go.
Four interactive tools your child can play with. A thermometer, a sea level, a bank balance and a lift, all sitting beside the same number line, so below zero means something before it means arithmetic. A guided number line that walks a sum one place at a time and shows the two signs merging into one. A second guided line for the harder sums where a minus meets a minus. And a sign grid where your child can hide the answers, decide whether the result is positive or negative, and then check.
Use this if:
- Your child is in Year 4 to Year 11 and thinks −5 is bigger than −4
- You're preparing for the 11+, where temperature and depth questions come up most years
- Your child is doing GCSE Foundation and loses marks on the signs rather than the method
- You want a resource your child can check their own work with, not one more thing on your to-do list
Built by an experienced maths teacher with over 3,000 hours of one-to-one tutoring experience and a Master's in Education.
Format: Interactive digital lesson, link sent by email straight after purchase.
Suitable for: Year 4 to Year 11, 11+, KS2, KS3, KS4, GCSE Foundation.
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