Becoming a teacher as reminded me of all the cool tricks my past teachers had taught me on daunting concepts. So today, I explain a fun and cool and EASY way to the teach greater than, less than concept to kids.
SPOILER ALERT: it all has to do with a alligator’s mouth!
The first step I did to teach greater than, less than was by grabbing some white board markers and straight up drawing alligator’s mouth. Damn this teacher life is reallyyyy pulling the artist out of me!
I used the alligators to show how when they open their mouth, they are eating the fishies in the water. And their goal is to eat as many fish as they can. So whichever direction the mouth is opening at means that is the side that has the greater number.
I wrote a few examples and had the kids try to help me write the symbols. But I was quickly seeing that they were still having a hard time understanding the concept and the symbols.
So after some more researching online and finding easy ways to make this greater than, less than concept easier to understand, I found this really clever alligator tool on Amazon. So cute right?! I thought about purchasing this but since I’m all about trying to save money, I was like “Hey, I can make that!” So being the artisté that I am, I made these out of construction paper and markers.
When I brought this to class, the kids loved it SOOO much and quickly go the hang of the greater than, less than concept! Click here for what we did with this and the gummy bears.
Tell me what you think if you try this out!
What do you think?