I'm really excited about how well one of my new lesson ideas for fifth grade CS is working out.
I teach them to count in binary early in the class which they LOVE. In the new lesson I have seven sets of cards with numbers and symbols on them from:
binary
hexadecimal
base 3
base 3 but with different symbols
base 5 but with different symbols
cuneiform
decimal
Each set of cards contains numbers from 1 to 150. Students put them in order and match symbols of the same value.
It's chaos.
Why cuneiform and base 3 ?
The writing system has so many rules and symbols it might be more difficult than Egyptian Hieroglyphics which are more difficult than modern Chinese with it's pictograms
And also more difficult than ancient Greek, ancient Hebrew or any ancient form of any modern language that is based on a ancient dead language
Where the ancient language forms are usually more difficult than the modern forms for the same language
Is why not
cuneiform numbers aren’t bad at all. though it’s disturbing how they have place value but no zero
Try writing a simple sentence with a subject object and verb in cuneiform and you will not find it easy even if the numbers are easy
