My Granddaughter's math work sheet. (Third Grade) Have I been out of the classroom too long both of these do not make sense to me? #2 says: _____ 2. The perimeter of Sophia's garden is 42 squares meter. The garden is 6 meter wide. She needs to determine the length of the garden. What is the length of the garden ***cut*** _____ 8.The perimeter of Aiden book bag is 26 squares inches. The bag is 8 inches long. What is the width of the bag? For all problems on the page the possible answers are a. 13 b. 30 c. 40 d. 24 e. 16 f. 5 g. 48 h. 60
I'd say that the answer to #2 is meant to be 15 and to #8 is meant to be 5. However....the fact that the questions are measuring perimeter in square units makes my brain hurt.
The teacher gave this out? Ick. It's horrifying, and a couple of the questions don't even make sense. (Perimeter of a scooter and a water tower? Really??) Here's why elementary teachers HAVE to know some math. ("Squares meters" doesn't even make sense. I devoutly hope someone intended "units" instead of "squares", or maybe had in mind a pretend unit called a square. Ick, anyway and still, though.) As for the math, I think you're confusing perimeter and area. Your division strategy works for calculating the length of a side of a rectangle given the other side and the area - but perimeter is all the way around, so some subtraction is called for. (The formula is P = 2(length + 2(width). Find out whether the kid knows that.) Try having your granddaughter draw a simple picture of each problem, have her figure out which sides represent the length and which the width, and then have her label BOTH lengths (or widths, as the case may be) with the number that the problem gives.
The wording isn't great, but if the child understands how to calculate perimeter, I think the problems are fairly straight-forward.
And there's NO excuse to require word problems that don't follow basic rules of English grammar, punctuation, and number agreement.
Ugh, plus they're measuring the "perimeter" of clearly three-dimensional objects such as book bags and water towers (?). And Chloe bought a scooter that was 18 meters long and 12 meters wide!!??? And I really, really want to see Jacob's pencils...
The water-tower problem requires one either to decide that it doesn't matter what the heck a water tower actually is or to ignore a number of salient features of one (including the fact that the functional portion of a water tower normally doesn't have a perimeter: it has a circumference.) For third grade, I still call bogus.
Dave, let's take the garden - that question at least makes SOME sense. The perimeter is 42 meters. The width is 6 meters. Draw a rectangle - fortunately, it doesn't have to be to scale. Label the short sides 6 meters. There are two, yes? Add them together: that's 12 meters. If we subtract 12 meters from 42 meters, we get 30 meters, and that's the measurement of BOTH sides that are the length of the garden. And now we can divide: 30 meters / 2 = 15 meters each.
I want to call her teacher but son won't let me (I can be professional) everything you guys have said is screaming in my head!!!!
I'd love to share these questions with my class to see if they notice the absurdities of the sizes and the multitude of problems. I won't, though, for fear that they won't see the problems and THAT will make my head hurt even more than it does now.
Thanks TeacherGroupie I know how to do it :thumb: I am just so flustered that I could not write it down correctly I kept thinking, "square so I am using area" I mean I taught algebra many years along with industrial ed. I am just so mad at someone who is supposed to be teaching advanced 3rd grade!
Dave, I figured it was something like that - and that's a large part of why I've spouted off so apoplectically about the worksheet.
I can't get over the grammatical issues. Was this translated from another language and that's why the English is so choppy and non-sensical?
"42 squares meter" makes my head hurt exponentially From their About Us page on the site that made the worksheet: "we have grown to be a team of 16 teachers dedicated to writing high quality materials directly aligned to the Core Math Curriculum" If this is high quality, I would hate to see low quality.
NO NO NO You can't claim something makes sense if you must change what it says to make any sense of it. If the problems were written correctly, they might be straight forward to a student that understands calculating perimeter, but the problems have so many errors it is just sickening.
The WORLDS BIGGEST SCOOTER!!! 18 meters long Let's think about this for a second. 18 meters is 59 feet Thank goodness for high quality worksheets for the kids.
Haha...sometimes in upper level classes, I can understand that it can be hard to come up with quality, realistic word problems. On the other hand, for something as simple as perimeter, it should be easy to generate a slew of sensible examples. Unfortunately we don't have that here. And unfortunately I worry too many kids wouldn't even question if that makes sense. All too often my ids make an error in their work, and happily report negative areas.
Yes, in the feeble attempt to make it relevant...I think they pulled an "old worksheet" and tried to fancy it up with relevant things like scooters and bookbags, and then forgot to read the problems to make sure they had subject-verb agreement...and make sure that the perimeter sizes were REALISTIC.
Seems they just changed inches or feet to meters. Also, none of the problems teach the students relevant reasons for finding the perimeter of these things. If there is no understanding about why you need to calculate these things then there is no real life reason for the math.
Sometimes I wish I could just focus solely on developing materials for math curricula. These just make me downright depressed.
I'm a sucker for punishment--I've printed it out to give it to my students today. I'll make it a challenge to see how many problems they can find.
