Looking for effective strategies for teaching inequalities? Here are some tips that have helped my students over the years!
Symbol Memorization Methods: Alligator & Pacman
The alligator and pacman methods work essentially the same way. Sketching the animal or the pacman around the symbol represents the animal chomping at the larger number.
Many teachers create elaborate stories based on the idea, and you might want to do that as well.
Essentially, making it silly also makes it more memorable for our brains!
This strategy works for lots of learners.
Symbol Memorization Methods: The “L”
Other learners might benefit more from this method of simply rotating the inequality symbols slightly to see which one looks like an L…that’s the less than symbol!
Such a simple strategy–which is usually the best one to use!
How to Remember to Flip the Sign
Once students figure out how to distinguish the greater than sign from the less than sign, the next hurdle to jump through is remembering to flip the sign when dividing by a negative.
Another of my strategies for teaching inequalities that I’m sharing in this post is using a mnemonic device.
These are great for memorizing so many things (“please excuse my dear aunt sally,” anyone?).
Use the D. N. F. from “Dogs need food!” to remember Dividing by a Negative? Flip the sign!
Feel free to copy and paste these images into your own personal teaching resources. I hope they’re helpful!
If you’d like a black and white version as well as the color version, in pdf form, click here to have it emailed to you.
You’ve got this!
-Mary
