Becoming the Greater or Less Than Symbol!

Hi friends! Happy Presidents' Day Weekend!
For those of you who are new to this blog, I love integrating the Arts into my curriculum. I have been so fortunate to have had many trainings in integrating Dance, Drama, Visual Arts and Music with content. Using the Arts is so engaging for the students and helps learning "stick".

Last week, I gave a math test to assess my students before conferences.  Here's a look at the test. I included  the many different word problems we have been learning that are included in the Common Core.

 If you're interested in the test, let me know. It gave me great information about my students. However, I was shocked that my firsties had forgotten how to use the greater or less than symbols. :(

 Last weekend I came up with an idea to help them.Don't you love a teacher's brain?All of a sudden, this idea just popped into my head? I wanted to come up with a lesson that would be engaging and allow them to be up and moving so why not make them be the symbols!
I decided to give 2/3 of my class a number card between 20-100 and the other third became the greater or less than symbol.
I played music and the students danced around the room to the music. Once the music stopped, the students had to get into groups of three - 2 numbers and a symbol. After each group assembled, I called out " compare". At this cue, students put themselves into a number sentence and the greater or less than symbol would have to figure out which way to point. We then read the number sentences around the room.

The kids then switched jobs and we did it all over again!!!! So fun!

 The next day we played this dice roll game with 20 sided dice in partners to practice.