Boy, I’m glad I don’t have kids, because this makes no sense to me.
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Do You Understand My First-Grade Child’s Homework?
Posted in DO NOT WANT. on Friday, Nov 13, 2009
Freakgirl is a freelance writer/instructional designer/editor who's always looking for gigs. When she's not slaving over online training or writing articles that explain how stuff works, she's baking cupcakes — or wishing for kittens — or uncorking a bottle of red.
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My brain has this to say. “ouch”
Even after reading the explanations at the bottom, I still didn’t get it.
Math is hard.
I just wrote a (admittedly probably too long) comment, but I lost it because I neglected to put my name & email again after I previewed the comment. Is there a way to have the blog remember my info the way your old layout did?
Me neither! Math is STUPID.
Hmmm. That’s a question for Nicci
I will ask her.
Dudes, I have no fucking idea.
Those poor kids!
I have a degree in economics, teach design at the university level, have done advanced calculus, etc., and I don’t even understand the “explanations”. I don’t feel dumb, I’m pissed off now.
Hmm – maybe it’s because my kids are not too far from 1st grade (well, 6 years ago for the youngest), but I got this as soon as I saw it. And I can’t believe it’s been that long since he had that kind of work – feels like it was just a couple years ago!
I also second Susie’s request. :-)
Father of a first-grader, here. I see stuff like this all the time, though this is a severe case. Somewhere along the line, folks figured that some kids “learn intuition” differently. In this case, it appears they’re looking for kids to understand decimal position (number of 10’s, number of 1’s), and figure that this approach will work.
I know that my (mathematically-gifted) son occasionally whines about stuff like this—”draw blocks”, “use a number line”, etc. He solves the problem his way, and then figures out how to answer the question as asked.
Another challenge for parents is ensuring this doesn’t sour your kids on the subject. (”Why do I have to COLOR in this part of my homework? This is supposed to be MATH?!”—”Ok, let’s start talking about maps and coloring, and topology”
The number in the upper left is 8 …. the number of coins on the right is 8 …. they want you to add 3 …. so you draw 3 coins in the empty boxes, but doing this means you end up with 1 coin in the bottom row of boxes.
The top row of boxes is full now with 10 coins and the bottom row has 1 coin …. using the decimal system, the kids know that 10+1=11 …. and now by extension, they also know that 8+3=11. Presumedly the idea here is to help them see how they can work their way through what 8+3 is by using their ten fingers?
Easy as cake! Okay not really.
Guys, lets call this what it is…the terrorists winning. Clearly they have an agenda to ensure that our children are as math-tarded as possible.
Nicci & I will get the comments issue worked out early next week. Sorry, all!
I actually teach this in kindergarten. It’s not that complicated. It just seems weird because we didn’t learn math this way. Well, that and the directions just plain suck. Ten frames are used to help kids visualize numbers. They also help them to work with groups of fives and tens. So for the first problem, 8+3=11 and 10+1=11. This worksheet is helping kids to realize that 11 is one group of 10 plus 1. It also helps kids to visualize the different ways to solve an addition problem. Um, yeah.
I think I am too old to understand, like an old dog and new tricks. I get the logic behind it, but I can’t grasp it. Grrrrrr!
My boy/girl twins are in 1st grade and they JUST brought home a similar math page. I didn’t get it at all. I had no idea how to tell them to do it, and they seemed to have no idea, either – I figured it would at least look FAMILIAR to them, like they’d been studying it already, but nope. We turned it in incomplete!