Thursday, April 5, 2007

Greater Than and Less Than

I don't know why I am writing about this, but this is something that I really don't know why kids have such a problem with this..... A math problem is a sentence that is read from left to right. That makes sense.

+ is a symbol that means to add.
- is a symbol that means to subtract.
= is a sybol that means what is on one side is the same as the other side

The kids get that. Then we move on to
> is a symbol that means greater than. It points to the right.
< is a symbol that means less than. It points to the left.
When you hold out your hands in front of you, you can see the built in <> signs in your hands. All the kids start out well.....Then they go home....their parents confuse them with talk of alligators and birds and eating the big piece. It drives me crazy!!!!

All the have to remember is less than points to the left and read from left to right.

That is my take on it.

1 comment:

Sharie said...

I like your take on it. I've never heard of alligators or birds and so I'll use your method when it comes time to teach the boys about < >!