I think the work I am giving Z for math is too hard.
She has a book that is all word problems.
Here is the type of problem that she is having difficulties with:
Jane buys three caramel apples. Susan buys two pretzels.
Who spends more?
How much more?
So what Z had to do is look on the menu and find the price of 3 caramel apples and add them together, which she can do.
Then she addes together the price of two pretzels.
Then she compares the two answers and is able to answer the first part of her problem - Susan spends more.
But when it comes to figuring out how to tell _how much more_ she gets confused. Several times she just added the two amounts together and didn't seem to notice that that answer didn't make any sense. :(
When she would get lost I would ask her leading questions to help her find out how to get the answer. And she would seem to get it but still about half the time she was getting those types of problems wrong.
I am not sure if I should scale back and do work that she doesn't find as challenging or if I should just take more time to teach her this idea and keep going on.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
What if you have the exact change for each item. Have her compare the two amounts. If you have the same amount of quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies, plus the difference...She can do the real "take away" (subtraction). Sometimes doing it visually a few times will get the concept through.
Well, in my opinion, you encourage her to work things out as much as she can, but if she doesn't get a concept, you simply go ahead and teach it to her. That is what they would do in school, after all. I don't muck around with leading questions and nudges in the right direction; I figure if a child doesn't know something you have to directly teach it to them so they'll know, then later you test them on it a couple of times to make sure they have mastered the concept.
I don't think this maths is necessarily too hard for Z, you just have to work it through more thoroughly.
I like Granmere's idea of doing it visually. Or kinisthetically.
Hello! What is the name of the word problem book?
Thanks
Hey Jason it is called Menu Math.
Mom - That is a good idea. I think I can try that a couple tiimes so she gets the idea. Thank you
Sarah - That is a good point.
Post a Comment