Video Transcript
Look at the following number line. Which numbers are less than 600?
Before we start to answer the question, let’s take a moment to do what we’re told to do in the first sentence. Let’s look at the number line. This number line contains lots of three-digit numbers, and it starts with the number 596. Let’s count along the number line. 597, 598, 599. We’re counting in ones here. Each new number is one more than the last. 600, 601, 602, 603, 604. As we’re counting along the number line, these numbers are getting bigger. 605, and the last number on our number line is 606. As we counted from left to right, the numbers became greater.
Our question asks us, which numbers are less than 600? Well, there are lots and lots of numbers that are less than 600. But this question is asking us which numbers are less than 600 on our number line. We can see that the number 600 has been marked with a ring around it. As we’ve already said, if we count to the right on our number line, the numbers are going to get larger. But we want to find numbers that are less than 600. So, we need to start at 600 and count back along the number line, to the left. Which numbers are less than 600? 599 is less than 600, so is 598, also 597, and 596.
We found four numbers that were less than 600 on our number line. We started with the number 600 and then counted backwards. The numbers that we can see that are less than 600 are 599, 598, 597, and 596.