Counting 2 groups
Let鈥檚 count some strawberries.
Here are two bowls of strawberries.
How many strawberries are there in each bowl?
Which bowl has more strawberries?
Comparing 2 groups
Let鈥檚 compare the two groups.
When the strawberries are in a line, it is easier to see which bowl has the most.
Bowl a has more strawberries than bowl b.
Example 1
Here are two bookshelves.
Which shelf has the smallest number of books?
It isn鈥檛 that easy to say for sure which bookshelf has the smallest number of books without counting them and then working out which number is bigger.
So, try counting them.
Bookshelf a has 8 books.
Bookshelf b has 7 books.
Look at this number line.
7 comes before 8, so we can say 7 is smaller than 8.
So bookshelf b has the smaller number of books.
Example 2
Here are pictures of two numbers. Count the spots in each ten frame.
Which number is the smallest?
When comparing two numbers, we can write both numbers down and use either 'greater than' or 'smaller than' in a short sentence.
For example:
16 is smaller than 19
or you could say:
19 is greater than 16
Activity 1
Can you think of a number that is smaller than 17?
Can you think of a number that is greater than 17?
Activity 2
Activity 3
Karate Cats Maths game. game
Train with the Karate Cats to become an expert in addition and subtraction, multiplication and division, place value and more!
More on Counting and ordering
Find out more by working through a topic
- count13 of 20
- count14 of 20
- count15 of 20
- count16 of 20