Greater Than, Less Than

Ava’s first grade teacher, Mrs. Lane, posts a blog entry with the upcoming week’s schedule and what they will be learning in the upcoming week.  I love this!  She also sends homework home only on Friday, asking that they turn it in by the following Thursday.  I love this, too.  Ava didn’t have any homework in kindergarten.  Mrs. Lane mentioned at open house that she understands the busy schedule of a family, so that is why she handles homework the way she does.  We can definitely appreciate it!  (I think we might have a hard time adjusting next year, if / when homework might be due the following day, though!)

When I looked at this week’s schedule, I saw “greater than,  less than” math concept.  My memory immediately flashed to first grade, to Mrs. Panza drawing an alligator on the board, explaining the concept.  I’m not sure if I missed the first day of this concept’s explanation (or if I wasn’t paying attention!) but I didn’t understand it.  Yes, I guess it IS possible to not understand “greater than / less than”.  Now, keep in mind that I could easily see that one number was larger than another number.  What I didn’t understand was the symbol < and >.  It might as well have been Greek!  Fast-forward a year, to Mrs. Crawford’s second grade class, when I didn’t fill out my paper since I didn’t know which symbol applied to the math work.  Mrs. Crawford sent me out in the hall to complete my work, even though I didn’t know the first thing about which symbol was the applicable answer for that particular problem.  Nice.  I think this must’ve set the course for the rest of my math career, sadly.  L  So, fast-forward 30 years (exactly), to Mrs. Lane’s blog posting.  It looked something like this:

Math: Greater than, less than/ Subtractions-

missing addends

Reading: Focus on retelling beginning, middle

and end; setting

Extended Text: The Magic Tree House #2

Grammar: Synonyms and antonyms

Writing: Narrative- writing 2 or more sequenced

events on a specific topic

Phonics: Words Their Way- word families, at, ad, ag, ap, an,

S.S., Health, Science

Land forms, Where do I live?

Continents and Oceans

 As you can imagine, I didn’t want Ava’s lifelong attitude toward math to be the same one I possess.  So, Sunday we sat down and I explained “greater than, less than.”  I brought out the old “alligator” analogy, telling her that the alligator only wanted to eat the biggest number.  The “<”symbol would look like the open jaws of an alligator, eating food (biggest number). 

We did 20 or so problems, to solidify her understanding.  Ava understood it immediately and did all of the problems like a champ!  She drew teeth on the greater than sign, for each of her answers.  When I told her she didn’t have to add teeth, she said she wanted to add them.  So, we had a paper full of teeth.  I had her read the answered problem out loud, so she could “translate” the symbols into words, as well.  She understood.  I then created some open-ended problems, which I thought would really make sure she got it.  One of the problems I gave her looked like this:

9 < __ 

In the blank, Ava wrote her response as "9 < 1000." I had to chuckle.  We only went over the “thousands” place once recently.  So obviously that stuck, too.   She finished about 20 other problems like this one, each one answered correctly.  She actually asks if I will give her more math problems (subtraction, etc). 

On Monday, Mrs. Lane e-mailed me, telling me Ava was the only one in class who knew what “greater than , less than” meant.  That’s my girl.  J  I am sure there will be other educational hurdles, but at least she made it past one that tripped me up!  J

Peace, love and Ava's understanding > math problems,

Shelly, Doug, Ava and Liam