Classroom Volunteering and WOH parents (was: Kindergarten - my child "going postal" every morning..

My pet peeve is the word problems in math that make no sense whatsoever....
DD was in 3rd grade last year, and they were learning graphing and mapping.
They had a word problem with a bar graph that graphed the height of a plant vs.
the date, and the kids were supposed to fill in the last day based on the
previous pattern.
The plant height, over the course of the week, grew some days, and shrunk some
days (I forget the exact pattern.) Although it was obvious to me that the
teacher was looking for pattern recognition, I thought it was a terrible way to
provide the lesson. My daughter answered that on the last day, the plant would
be flat, because no plant can loose height so often without dying...
I have also written on some of my daughter's more ambiguous homework
assignments, "even Mommy doesn't know what you're looking for here." and told
her to bring it to her teacher and get him to explain it again.
- Blanche

wrote:

Also I've had dd#1's math homework answers marked wrong by the teacher
when she got the right answer but didn't use the method the teacher
wanted her to use (when she moved in the middle of the year).

So I don't know that you can necessarily assume that the fault was
with the parent doing the grading.

I'm thinking of cases where there was no explanation involved, just straight
arithmetic problems, things like adding 54 and 48 and getting 92 because they
forgot to carry the ten (I'm making that one up, my memory isn't THAT good!).
And no, there was no answer sheet.

--Helen

x-no-archive:yes (H Schinske) wrote:

wrote:

Also I've had dd#1's math homework answers marked wrong by the teacher
when she got the right answer but didn't use the method the teacher
wanted her to use (when she moved in the middle of the year).

So I don't know that you can necessarily assume that the fault was
with the parent doing the grading.

I'm thinking of cases where there was no explanation involved, just straight
arithmetic problems, things like adding 54 and 48 and getting 92 because they
forgot to carry the ten (I'm making that one up, my memory isn't THAT good!).
And no, there was no answer sheet.

Well for myself, I've had a problem with straight arithmetic since
about 3rd grade, so I would NEVER presume to grade math papers unless
I checked them with a calculator first. Although when my kids were in
school, not everyone had a calculator. In 1973 my dh was in Test
Pilot School at the time that my dd#2 was in 5th grade and finding
wrong answers in the teacher's manual, and he had to buy a calculator
that used reverse polish notation and it cost $500.00

So there might have been some excuse for it then.

But now - EVERYONE has at least a calculator if not a computer, so I
see little excuse for not checking the answers before you mark the
papers.

grandma Rosalie

We have three kids. I can't tell you how many times DH and I have sat
with frustrated kids trying to do public school homework assignments -
and none of us can fathom what the heck the teacher wants. Ambiguous
instructions, peculiar wording and misused terminology, fuzzy
intentions, sloppy layout, missing information. Plus quite often what
the kid has been told to do is at odds with the apparent instructions
printed on the page.

We have to laugh about it - two intelligent university educated adults
completely flummoxed by a Grade 3 homework sheet. One of our three has
a learning disability, so holy cow, if Mom and Dad can't understand
what's he's supposed to do, how the heck is a 9 year old? Our school
uses agenda books, so we just fire off notes to the teacher..."Jimmy
did not complete his homework assignment because it was not clear what
he was expected to do etc. etc."

Yikes.

Mary G.