What exactly is your suspicion? You’re asking questions like an angry prosecutor trying to get information from a hostile witness. But you aren’t giving any indication about why you doubt everything is exactly as it has been presented.
Are you saying that you think the test is phony, or that it is actually for a higher grade than first, or that this is all part of some agenda the OP or others have, or what exactly?
The question is standard first grade math based on common core state standards. Being an early assessment test it isn’t expected that every kid will know the answer. It’s just a way for a teacher to find out strengths and weaknesses among the students. Later in the year the same material will be taught, and the students will be tested again.
The test not only might be sent home to parents as a simple matter of parent/teacher communication, it is also available a thousand different places on the internet.
ALLRIGHT DAMNIT I WAS THE ONE WHO SMUGGLED THE TEST OUT IN MY ASS, along with this watch. See, I was a good friend of your dad’s. We were in that Hanoi pit of hell together for over five years. Hopefully, you’ll never have to experience this yourself, but when two men are in a situation like me and your dad were, for as long as we were, you take on certain responsibilities of the other. If it had been me who had not made it, Major Coolidge would be talking right now to my son Jim. But the way it turned out is I’m talking to you, Butch. I got something for ya…This watch I got here was first purchased by your great-grandfather during the first world war. It was bought in a little general store in Knoxville, Tennessee, made by the first company to ever make wrist watches. Up until then, people just carried pocket watches. It was bought by Private Doughboy Ryan Coolidge the day he set sail for Paris. This was your great-grandfather’s war watch, and he wore it every day he was in the war. Then when he had done his duty, he went home to your great-grandmother, took the watch off and put it in an old coffee can. And in that can it stayed 'til your granddad Dane Coolidge was called upon by his country to go overseas and fight the Germans once again. This time they called it World War Two. Your great-grandfather gave this watch to your granddad for good luck. Unfortunately, Dane’s luck wasn’t as good as his old man’s. Dane was a Marine and he was killed along with all the other Marines at the battle of Wake Island. Your granddad was facing death, and he knew it. None of those boys had any illusions about ever leaving that island alive. So three days before the Japanese took the island, your granddad asked a gunner on an Air Force transport named Winocki, a man he had never met before in his life, to deliver to his infant son, who he had never seen in the flesh, his gold watch. Three days later, your granddad was dead. But Winocki kept his word. After the war was over, he paid a visit to your grandmother, delivering to your infant father, his Dad’s gold watch. This watch. This watch was on your Daddy’s wrist when he was shot down over Hanoi. He was captured and put in a Vietnamese prison camp. He knew if the gooks ever saw the watch that it’d be confiscated; taken away. The way your Dad looked at it, this watch was your birthright. He’d be damned if any slopes were gonna put their greasy yellow hands on his boy’s birthright. So he hid it in the one place he knew he could hide something. His ass. Five long years, he wore this watch up his ass. And then he died of dysentery, he gave me the watch. I hid this uncomfortable hunk of metal up my ass for two years. Then, after seven years, I was sent home to my family. And now, little man, I give the watch to you. Along with this first grade math test.
But seriously. My daughter asked for math help in grade school. It was a simple algebra problem, however they hadn’t even begun doing algebra. I began by explaining that we could use the letter “x” to represent the number of apples instead of writing out “the number of apples”.
An hour or two later, my daughter was doing simple algebra. Win! Or so I thought. When she demonstrated to the class how she found the answer the teacher was upset. The idea behind the assignment was to create some degree of frustration over having to repeatedly guess, then modify the guess as results got closer to success. Eventually algebra would be introduced.
I actually had to go into school and meet with the teacher because my daughter thought she’d been bad.
If you followed the generally accepted SDMB quote style instead of the usenet style, or no style at all, it would be easier for people to tease out what you said as opposed to what comes from elsewhere.
I mean, this is what you typed into your post: “Which shows how to make a ten to solve 15 - 7?” There is no indication that it came from the test, or another poster, or anywhere. Not even that “>” that you use, or the quotation marks that I used. It’s simply part of your post.
If you’re going to make it difficult, I don’t see any reason for griping when people get it wrong.
As long as we’re going olde-school Usenet, I’m bottom-quoting this.
So, Frank…you’re saying that the “quote” below isn’t easier for you to read than the default quote box that just normally appears and that you manually have to undo?
>>>>>>>If you followed the generally accepted SDMB quote style instead of the usenet
>>>>>>style, or no
>>>>>>>>>>style at all, it would be easier for people
<<>><><><><> to tease out what you said as opposed to what
>>><<>>>>>>comes from
>elsewhere.
>>>>>< snip>
If you’re going to ma
>>>>>ke it difficult, I don’t see any reason for griping when people
>>>>get it wrong.
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.
Somewhere out there is a way of learning math that would have worked for me. I don’t think this is it. I suspect that method would have had me throwing a book across the room in 1st grade rather than 9th grade Algebra.
No, I don’t remember reading groups. My exposure to public school started in fifth grade, and has always been the “get in front of the class and teach” method. For reading, we had in-class reading and Accelerated Reader, where you would test take a computerized test in the library. For math, we actually were separated into different classes based on ability.
If they are separating students within classrooms, then testing them makes a lot more sense. I guess I’m surprised they can do this with the low number of teacher per student, but more power to them.
I do wonder if this contributes to the one flaw I’ve seen in the system–that of kids needing their parents to help them with their homework. Is instruction time being limited by this strategy? Would it be better if they started splitting out children into separate math classes earlier than fifth grade, so that teacher didn’t have to split instruction time between different groups?
I also wonder how it works with Common Core, which mandates the students have a certain level of knowledge at certain points. It doesn’t appear to have an allowance for separate tracks.
But, hey. If it’s working better than the old system, as you claim, then that’s definitely improvement. It’s not like parents needing to help their kids with their homework is a new problem, and maybe it’s better than it used to be.
(Though I admit the Montessori method doesn’t have this problem. But it requires triple the teacher to student ratio.)