options: Operations & Algebra: students learn to solve problems using algebraic thinking and operations such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. They may learn to identify and explain arithmetic patterns, evaluate or manipulate numerical expressions, and reason with equations and inequalities.

Functions: students learn to define, use, and evaluate functions to model relationships between quantities.

Modeling: students learn to choose and use appropriate mathematics and statistics to analyze real-world empirical situations, improve decisions, and report on their conclusions and the reasoning behind them.

Statistics & Probability: students learn to analyze and produce data distributions, and build understanding of univariate and bivariate data. They learn to interpret data, make statistical inferences, justify conclusions, understand rules of probability, and use probability to make decisions.

Measurement & Data: students learn to work with data and measure attributes such as time, money, length, area, and volume. They may learn to compare measurements to operations and convert between different units of measure.

Counting & Cardinality: students learn to know number names and the count sequence, count to tell the number of objects, and compare numbers.

Number Systems and Quantity: students learn to understand the complex number system and reason quantitatively.

Number & Operations in Base Ten: students learn to work with the base-ten system and build place value understanding.

Geometry: students learn to classify geometric figures by their properties, and understand and compare the relationships between them. Students develop and use formulas to compute lengths, areas, and volumes, and they use transformations to generate new shapes and compare existing ones. Geometry can be studied with and without coordinates.

Number & Operations - Fractions: students learn to understand fractions as numbers and may work with them using addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

Ratios & Proportional Relationships: students learn to recognize, describe, represent, and reason with ratios, rates, proportional relationships, and percent.
problem_activity: Narrative
The purpose of this activity is for students to compare numbers in a way that makes sense to them. Students can use physical objects or make drawings to represent each number (MP5), and match or count to compare. Students can also use their knowledge of the count sequence and understanding that each successive number refers to a quantity that is one more to compare the numbers. In the synthesis students describe how creating representations of numbers helps to compare numbers.
Action and Expression: Internalize Executive Functions.
After students decide which manipulative they will use for the activity, invite students to plan a strategy for how they will use their manipulatives to determine which number is more. If students choose to use counters, give them access to 5-frames to help with the counting.
Supports accessibility for: Visual-Spatial Processing, Conceptual Processing, Organization
Required Materials
Materials to Gather
Connecting cubes or counters
Launch
Groups of 2
Give students access to connecting cubes or counters.
“Work with your partner to figure out which number is more. Circle the number that is more.”
Activity
5 minutes: partner work time
Monitor for students who create representations of the numbers using cubes or a drawing and use these representations to compare.
Monitor for students who counted to figure out which number is more.
Student Facing
Circle the number that is more.
[IMG]
[IMG]
[IMG]
[IMG]
Student Response
Teachers with a valid work email address can
click here to register or sign in
for free access to Student Response.
Advancing Student Thinking
If students circle the number that is less instead of the number that is more, consider asking:
“What do you know about these two numbers? What are you trying to figure out?“
“How can you use the cubes to show each number? How can the cubes help you figure out which number is more?“
Activity Synthesis
Invite previously selected students to share the representations they made and how they used them to figure out which number is more.
“How did counting out the groups of objects or drawing pictures help you figure out which number is more?”
Invite previously selected students to share how counting helped them compare the numbers.
“We know 8 is more than 5. Compare these numbers using ‘less’.”


correct_option_index: 5