Comparing Numbers Worksheets

How do you teach comparing numbers?

Start with quantity, not notation. A child who can see that one group of counters is bigger than another already understands comparison; the symbols come afterwards as shorthand. That is why the first sheets here compare groups of objects and ten frames, and only then move to bare numerals.

The greater-than and less-than symbols are where it usually goes wrong, because > and < look alike and a rule learned as a trick does not survive a test. The reliable version is positional: the wide open side always faces the bigger number, the point always aims at the smaller one. Say the whole sentence out loud every time, "forty six is greater than forty one", and the symbol becomes a note of something the child already said rather than a shape to remember.

Comparing bigger numbers, one place at a time

Past twenty, comparing stops being about counting and starts being about place value. Two three-digit numbers are compared from the left: hundreds first, and only if those tie do the tens matter, and only if those tie too does it come down to the ones. The place-value pages here lay both numbers out in columns so that method is visible instead of assumed, and the sheets that force a tie in the leading column are the ones that prove a child is really using it.

Ordering is comparison repeated. Putting four or five numbers from least to greatest, then the same set from greatest to least, catches children who have quietly memorised "the answer is the long one". When comparing is secure, the same numbers are ready for our addition worksheets, and the rest of this age band lives in our kindergarten math worksheets. Like every page in our math worksheets collection, these print at 100% scale on US Letter or A4.