Lesson video

Hello, I'm Mrs. Cayley and I'm going to help you with your learning today.

We are going to be using the equality and inequality symbols when comparing the relative size of two numbers.

So let's have a look at today's lesson outcome.

Here's the outcome of today's lesson.

"I can use equality and inequality symbols to compare the relative size of two numbers." Here are keywords for today's lesson.

Can you say them after me? My turn.

"More than or greater than." Your turn.

My turn.

"Fewer than or less than." Your turn.

My turn.

"Equal to or the same as." Your turn.

My turn.

"Number line." Your turn.

Well done.

We'll be using these words in today's lesson.

You might have also seen the symbols that go with the words.

We'll be using those too.

Let's have a look at today's lesson outline.

So, today's lesson is all about using equality and inequality symbols to compare the relative size of two numbers, and we'll start by comparing numbers using the inequality and equality symbols, and then we will be using a number line to compare numbers.

So let's start on the first part of the lesson.

Here are some children that are going to help us in today's lesson.

We've got Sofia and Andeep.

Let's start on today's lesson.

We know we can use the symbols less than, equal to, and greater than to compare numbers.

These are called the equality and inequality symbols.

So the first inequality symbol is the "less than" symbol.

So this symbol represents "is less than." Can you make it with your hands like I have? That's right.

This is the equality symbol.

This symbol represents "is equal to." Can you make this with your hands? And the final inequality symbol, this symbol, represents "is greater than." Can you make that with your hands? And if you imagine two sets of cubes in between the symbols, it can help you remember which way around they go.

We're going to compare the cubes.

So can you see two sets of cubes here? We're going to be thinking about which set has more cubes.

So, in the first set, we've got one, two, three cubes, and in the second set, we've got one, two, three, four cubes.

So we've got three cubes and four cubes.

Which set has more cubes? And which symbol are we going to put in between? Are we going to put the equal to symbol or the greater than or the less than? That's right.

Three is less than four.

There are fewer yellow cubes than green cubes, so three is less than four.

Now I've swapped the cubes around.

So, this time, we've got four cubes and three cubes, so which symbol is going to go in between these two numbers? Is four equal to three? Is four greater than three or is four less than three? That's right.

Four is greater than three.

We can see that with the cubes as well.

Let's compare the cubes here.

So how many orange cubes have we got? Shall we count them? One, two.

Two orange cubes.

And how many purple cubes have we got? Shall we count them? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven purple cubes.

So, is two greater than seven, equal to seven, or less than seven? That's right.

Two is less than seven.

Now, I've swapped them around.

So we've got seven purple cubes and two orange cubes.

So which symbol is going to go in between the two numbers this time? Is it going to be seven is less than two, seven is equal to two, or seven is greater than two? That's right.

Seven is greater than two.

And we can see that with the cubes, can't we? Let's compare these cubes.

Shall we count the cubes? One, two, three, four, five cubes.

We've got five cubes on one side and I can see the other side is the same, so that must be five cubes as well.

So, is five less than five, equal to five, or greater than five? That's right.

Five is equal to five.

They are the same, aren't they? Let's compare these cubes.

How many cubes do we have in the top set? One, two, three, four, five, six cubes.

So we've got six blue cubes, and how many pink cubes are there? Shall we count them? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight pink cubes.

So, is six less than eight, equal to eight, or greater than eight? It's less than eight.

Six cubes is less than eight cubes, so six is less than eight.

Now I've swapped the cubes around.

So we've got eight cubes at the top and six cubes at the bottom.

So which symbol is going to go in between the numbers? Is it going to be equal to, greater than, or less than? That's right.

Eight is greater than six.

So did you notice that, when we swap the two numbers around, the symbol also swaps around? Let's compare these cubes.

So how many yellow cubes do we have? One, two, three.

Three yellow cubes, and do you know how many green cubes there are? One, two, three, four green cubes.

You might have known that already.

So which symbol is going to go in between three and four? Is it equal to, greater than, or less than? That's right.

Three is less than four.

Now I've swapped the cubes around so the numbers will swap around and so will the symbol.

So, this time, four is greater than three.

Let's compare the cubes here.

How many grey cubes have we got? I can already see that it's the same number.

We've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine grey cubes at the top, and nine grey cubes at the bottom, and they are equal.

That's right.

They are equal to each other.

They are the same.

Let's check your understanding.

Can you fill in the missing numbers and symbols? So you can see here, we are comparing three and four, then we're comparing two and two.

Then we're comparing four is greater than something, and the last one, something is less than six.

So can you think about which symbols might go in the circles and which numbers might go in the squares? Andeep said, "You could use cubes to help." So I've drawn some cubes for you, or you could get some real cubes out or draw your own and see if you can work out which numbers and symbols can go in the gaps.

So pause the video and have a think about this one.

How did you get on? So, the first one, we were comparing three and four, and three is less than four.

I can see that on the cubes.

Can you see the three yellow cubes and the four green cubes? So three is less than four.

What about two and two? So the orange cubes are showing two, aren't they? So, two and two.

Is two less than two, equal to two, or greater than two? Yes.

It's equal to two.

So when it's the same number, it's going to be equal to.

What about the next one? Four is greater than.

So I can see there are four green cubes.

What's it greater than? Hmm.

It could be greater than three, couldn't it? Four is greater than three.

So four green cubes are more than three yellow cubes.

What about the last one? Something is less than six.

So I can see we've got six blue cubes.

What's less than six? It could be five, couldn't it? Five is less than six.

Are there any other possible answers? Yes, Andeep thinks there are.

So, instead of having four is greater than three, we could have had four is greater than two, or four is greater than one, or four is greater than zero, and instead of having five is less than six, we could have had four is less than six, or three is less than six, or two is less than six, or one is less than six, or even zero is less than six.

How did you get on with that one? We can compare numbers using the words "greater than" and "less than," and, here, we've got some cubes representing lots of different numbers.

Which set has more cubes here? Can you see? We've got one cube and we've got six cubes, so which set has more cubes? That's right.

Six cubes is more than one cube.

So we can say six is greater than one.

Which set has fewer cubes? Can you see how many cubes are in the first set? That's three cubes, isn't it? And in the second set, can you count them with me? We've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight cubes.

So which set has fewer cubes? That's right.

Three cubes is fewer than eight cubes.

So the first set had fewer cubes than the second set.

Three is less than eight, and we've written it there with the symbol.

Three is less than eight.

Which set has fewer cubes here? What do you notice about these sets of cubes? That's right.

They have the same number, don't they? I can see we've got four cubes and another four cubes.

Four cubes is the same as four cubes, so which symbol can we use? That's right.

The equal to symbol.

Four is equal to four.

Let's check your understanding.

Can you fill in the missing numbers and symbols? So, can you see I've drawn some sets of cubes here, and in the squares, I want you to think about how many cubes are in each set, and in the circles, can you put a symbol to compare the two towers of cubes that are next to each other? So if you've got a piece of paper or a whiteboard, you can write these down, and if you've got some cubes, you could try it with real cubes, and see if you can work out which numbers and which symbols go in the gaps.

So pause the video and have a go at this.

How did you get on with this? So the first set of cubes had four cubes and six cubes.

So, is four less than six, equal to six, or greater than six? That's right.

Four is less than six.

And the second set of cubes, I can see these look the same.

We've got one, two, three, four, five cubes, and another five cubes.

These are the same, aren't they? So it is equal to.

Five is equal to five.

And the last two towers of cubes, I can see that the first one looks a lot bigger.

How many cubes have we got here? Shall we count them? Can you count them with me? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight cubes.

Eight cubes and three cubes.

Which one is more? That's right.

Eight is greater than three.

How did you get on with that one? Here's a task for you to have a go at.

We've got some pictures of cubes and we've got some numbers and symbols.

Can you match the picture and number cards and then use the symbols to compare two of the cards? So, see if you can find the right number to go with each set of cubes, and then try to put the symbols between two of the sets of cards.

Here's your second task.

Can you use the correct symbol between the numbers? So you might want to write this down or make the symbols using your hands.

So the first one is three and eight.

Are we going to have three is equal to eight, three is less than eight, or three is greater than eight? And write the correct symbol between those two numbers.

Then we've got four and nine.

Then we've got five and one, and six and six.

So pause the video and have a go at your tasks.

How did you get on with your tasks? So you might have used the less than symbol.

So I've used the less than symbol here, and I've done one is less than four, three is less than five, and two is less than six, and then I tried the greater than symbol, and I've got four is greater than one, five is greater than three, and six is greater than two.

What did you try? How did you get on on the second part of your task? Did you use the correct symbol between the numbers? So the first one was three is less than eight, and then we had four is less than nine, and then we had five is greater than one, and, finally, six is equal to six.

How did you get on with that one? Let's move on to the second part of our lesson, where we will be using a number line to compare numbers.

Let's compare the counters.

Can you see how many red counters there are and how many blue counters there are? And which set has more counters? That's right, we've got five red counters and we've got four blue counters, and there are more red counters than blue counters.

Five is greater than four, and, there, we've written it with the symbol.

Five is greater than four.

Is there a better way to compare the counters? Sofia has decided to line them up.

Sometimes, that makes it easier to compare two sets.

So here are the red counters.

We've got five red counters, and here are the blue counters.

We've got four blue counters, and we can easily see that five is greater than four and four is less than five.

Five is greater than four and four is less than five.

We can see the numbers on the number line.

So here's a number line from 0 to 10, so we can put the numbers on the number line.

We had four blue counters and five red counters.

Sophia is asking which number is less, and Andeep wants to know which number is more.

So, if we look at the numbers on the number line, we can see that four is closer to zero, so that's going to be less, and five is further away from zero, so five is going to be more.

So, Sofia said, "Four is nearer to zero," and Andeep said, "Five is further away from zero." We can use a number line to compare the numbers.

Here are our counters again.

We've got five red counters and four blue counters.

Five is greater than four, and here's our number line.

We've got five red counters and four blue counters, and I can see that five is more than four.

Let's compare these counters.

This one's a bit harder to compare, isn't it? Shall we count them? How many red counters are there? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven red counters, and how many blue counters are there? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine blue counters.

Sofia thinks it's a good idea to line them up to compare them.

So here are our counters again.

We've got seven red counters and nine blue counters.

I can already see which one is more.

Can you? So, seven is less than nine, and nine is greater than seven.

We can use a number line to compare the numbers.

So here's our seven red counters and here are our nine blue counters.

Can you see which one is more and which one is less? So, seven is closer to zero, so seven is less than nine.

Nine is further away from zero, so nine is more than seven.

Nine is greater than seven and seven is less than nine.

We can see the numbers on the number line.

Here are our numbers, seven and nine.

Sofia wants to know which number is less.

Andeep wants to know which number is more.

Which number is closer to zero on the number line? Sofia said, "Seven is nearer to zero," and Andeep said, "Nine is further away from zero." So nine is greater than seven.

Let's check your understanding.

Who is correct? Sophia said, "One is greater than nine." Andeep said, "One is less than nine." You could use the number line to help you.

So pause the video and think about this one.

Who did you think is correct? Sofia said, "One is greater than nine." I've put the numbers on the number line.

Is one greater than nine? No, one is closer to zero, so one is less than nine.

So who was correct? That's right.

Andeep was correct.

One is less than nine.

Who is correct this time? Sofia said, "Four is greater than six." Andeep said, "Four is less than six." I wonder if you can use the number line to help you.

So pause the video and think about this one.

Let's see the numbers on the number line.

Four and six.

So, Sofia thought four is greater than six, and Andeep thought four is less than six.

Well, I can see that four is closer to zero on the number line, so four is less than six, so Andeep was correct.

Do you agree? Here's a task for you to have a go at.

Can you find the numbers on the number line and fill in the correct symbol? So you can see we are comparing nine and four, three and eight, one and one, and two and six.

Let's see if you can fill in the correct symbol in between these numbers.

So, is it going to be less than, equal to, or greater than? And you can use the number line to help you.

Here's your second part of the task.

Can you compare two numbers using counters on the tracks? You could draw them or put the counters on, and you could choose two different colours to compare one number with another number.

Circle the numbers on the number line and think about which is greater and which is less.

So pause the video and have a go at your tasks.

How did you get on with your task? Did you find the numbers on the number line and fill in the correct symbol? So, the first one, we were comparing nine and four.

Is nine equal to four or is nine greater than four or is nine less than four? And if you find it on the number line, you'll be able to see.

That's right, nine is greater than four, and here they are on the number line.

Nine is greater than four.

Let's look at one and one.

Is one equal to one, or is one greater than one, or is one less than one? That's right, one is equal to one, and if you look on the number line, one is equal to one.

They're the same.

Let's look at three and eight.

Which symbol is going to go between three and eight? Is it going to be three is equal to eight, three is greater than eight, or three is less than eight? That's right, three is less than eight, and on the number line, I can see that three is closer to zero than eight is.

So three is less than eight.

Let's look at the last one.

We are comparing two and six.

Is two less than six, equal to six, or greater than six? That's right, two is less than six, and when we see them on the number line, you can see that two is closer to zero than six is.

How did you get on with the second part of your task? So we asked you to put some counters on the track and compare two sets of counters.

So I've used six red counters and seven blue counters, and I can see that six is less than seven.

When I find them on the number line, I can see that six is closer to zero than seven is, so six is less than seven.

You might have tried some different numbers.

Here, I've tried five red counters and four blue counters.

I can see that five is greater than four, and when I put the numbers on the number line, I can see that five is further away from zero than four is, so five is greater than four.

You might try two sets that have the same amount of counters.

So, here, I've got three red counters and three blue counters.

So I can see that three is the same as three, so three is equal to three, and on the number line, three is the same as three.

Which ones did you try? We've got to the end of our lesson, and we have learned that the equality and inequality symbols can be used to compare the relative size of two numbers.

This symbol represents "less than," this symbol represents "greater than," and this symbol represents "is equal to." We can also use a number line to compare numbers by seeing which one is closer to zero.

Well done, everyone.

See you next time.