When teaching addition strategies in 1st grade, Doubles and Doubles +1 are two of my favorites! They’re fun to teach, easy for students to grasp, and super powerful when it comes to building number sense and fact fluency. In this post, I’ll walk you through how I introduce both strategies, some of my go-to activities, and the resources I use to make doubles and near doubles facts hands-on and engaging!
You can grab my favorite addition lessons and activities in my Happy Math Addition Unit!
Why teach Doubles and Doubles + 1 in 1st Grade?
In 1st grade, we learn many addition strategies—and I always tell my students that strategies are like tools in a toolbox. When we need to add, we can pull out a tool or strategy to help us!
Doubles and Doubles +1 are two of the first mental math strategies we introduce because they’re so foundational for fluency. Doubles facts (like 4 + 4 = 8) are facts we want students to know “in a snap.” And once they’ve mastered doubles, we use those known facts to introduce Doubles +1—facts where the addends are neighbors, like 4 + 5 or 6 + 7.
These strategies:
- Help students move beyond counting on fingers
- Build fluency and confidence
- Lay the groundwork for more complex strategies (like Make a 10 and Place Value strategies)
Introducing the Doubles and Doubles +1 Strategies
I introduce each of these addition strategies during our whole group mini lesson! Each day, my students gather on the rug for our mini lesson. I use pre-made slides to teach my lesson. I love using slides because they are a great visual and allow all students to participate in the lesson!
Each lesson includes:
- Our learning objective of the day
- important vocabulary to review
- Introducing and modeling the strategy
- Practice problems that we solve together
We always start with focusing on learning the doubles facts! Our goal is to turn the doubles facts into Snap Facts (facts we know in a snap!)
Doubles + 1 (Near Doubles) Mini Lesson
After spending time learning the doubles facts and working on our fluency with songs and videos (more on that later,) I introduce the Doubles + 1 Strategy (or near doubles). This strategy helps students take what they already know about doubles and apply it to new facts.
In our whole group mini lesson, I model how we can use a known doubles fact to solve a fact that’s just one more. For example, if I already know that 6 + 6 = 12, then I can figure out that 6 + 7 = 13 because I’m just adding one more! We talk about how the numbers are “neighbors” on the number line, and that’s our clue to use the Doubles +1 Strategy.
Just like our Doubles lesson, I use slides to introduce and walk through this strategy. We practice identifying neighbor numbers, modeling with manipulatives, and solving near doubles facts together. I also encourage students to explain why the strategy works, which helps deepen their number sense and mental math confidence.
Doubles and Doubles + 1 videos we love
In order to build fact fluency, I love using music and videos to work on knowing our doubles facts in a snap! Adding some music and movement is one of the best ways to help students memorize their doubles facts! When we start learning Doubles and Doubles +1, I love weaving in songs during our math warm-ups, movement breaks, or even transitions.
A few of our favorites include:
- “Doubles Doubles (I Can Add Doubles)” by Harry Kindergarten
- “Doubles Facts Number Rock” by Numberock
- Doubles Plus One – Addition Facts by Twin Sisters
Hands-On Doubles and Doubles +1 Practice in Small Groups
After our whole group mini lesson, students participate in guided math rotations. Each day, my students complete 3 rotations: teacher table, math tub, and technology/independent. At teacher table, I work with small groups and give hands-on practice with our math skills.
My favorite activities for Small Groups are math mats! Just slip into a dry erase pouch, add manipulatives, and you have no prep, hands-on practice!
How We Use the Math Mats:
- Students are given manipulatives (like linking cubes, mini erasers, or counters).
- We build the doubles fact together first (e.g., 4 + 4).
- Then we transition to Doubles +1 by adding just one more counter to one of the groups—visualizing the near doubles strategy (e.g., 4 + 5).
- Students write the matching number sentence in the box on their mat.
Using manipulatives like this really helps the concept stick. Students can physically see how 4 + 5 is just one more than 4 + 4. It builds number sense, encourages flexible thinking, and boosts confidence.
Here’s a peek at our Doubles + 1 Math Mat in action!
You can find both of these math mats inside my Addition Strategies unit! OR I also have a bundle of all of my math mats that includes 100+ math mats to use all year long!
Doubles and Near Doubles Games and Centers
Double Bubble Trouble
This is a fun game to play during small groups and then re-use as a math center! Students will pick a doubles flash card (included) and find the sum. They will “pop” a bubble with the sum on their game mat by covering it with a manipulative. The first player to pop all the bubbles is the winner.
Doubles and Doubles +1 Solve the Room
Solve the Room is our favorite math center that we use every week in my 1st grade classroom! Each week, I tape a set of task cards around our classroom. When students visit this center, they grab a clipboard and recording sheet and walk around looking for the task cards. They solve the problem and write it on their paper. When they are finished they get to “be the teacher” and visit our classroom grading station to check their own work! They absolutely love it! You can read more about Solve the Room here!
This Doubles and Doubles + 1 Solve the Room is perfect for practicing these facts!
Doubles and Doubles +1 Math Memory Match
In this math center, students use the doubles and doubles + 1 equations and matching answers to play memory match! They lay the cards down rows and take turns turning over 2 cards looking for matches. Once they find a match they can record it on their answer sheet! Find the game here!
You can also grab Math Match Games to use all year long here!
Doubles and Doubles + 1 Worksheets
Once students have had time to explore doubles and near doubles strategies through whole group lessons, small group instruction, and centers, I like to follow up with independent practice using worksheets. These pages give students the chance to show what they know, and they give me a quick way to check for understanding!
Each worksheet focuses on:
- Identifying and solving doubles facts
- Recognizing doubles + 1 (near doubles) equations
- Using the doubles strategy to solve related problems
Teacher Tip: I love using these pages as a quick formative assessment after introducing each strategy. You can also add them to your sub tub, use them for morning work, or send them home for review.
Want to make it even more engaging? Try using the worksheets in a math notebook, or pairing them with manipulatives like counters or linking cubes so students can model the facts as they work.
Doubles and Doubles + 1 Addition Strategy Posters
After introducing each new addition strategy, we add a matching poster to our math strategy wall. These visuals serve as helpful reminders that there’s more than one way to solve a problem. As we move through the unit, the wall fills up with strategies students can choose from—empowering them to pick the one that works best for their thinking. It also becomes a helpful tool during small groups and independent work!
Doubles and Doubles +1 are such powerful strategies for helping first graders build fluency and confidence with addition. I hope this post gave you some fresh ideas to make these lessons fun, effective, and easy to implement in your classroom.
Want your addition unit (including these Counting On lessons and activities) planned for you? Check out my Happy Math Addition Unit here! It has everything you need to introduce and teach addition to 20 in 1st grade!
