Yes correct! Since @maya54 99% agreed with me I didn’t get petty and further explains. 
But yep that’s what I meant!
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This is the “read to learn” component. Math story problems start around 4th grade. So yep, if you can comprehend the content/vocabulary/etc you aren’t going to begin to be able to solve the math problem.
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I had a math program in 4th grade that was primarily word problems. It was some sort of experimental set of booklets that would arrive approximately monthly. I remember bringing each booklet home and doing it within a couple days. I was always disappointed when I came across a page that was just math without words.
To this day I rant when I hear ads that claim “5 times faster” when what they really mean is it takes 1/5 the time.
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My kids were in split grades in K/pre-K, 1st/2nd, and 4th/5th. It was really good for them. The only thing I was sorry about was in 5th grade my oldest had an awesome teacher named Mr Little but had to go to Ms P for math. I really wish Mr Little could’ve taught the math part too.
My kids hated math and never had an awesome math teacher so we had to do a lot of helping with homework. They were fine at math but it’s really just not their thing. I don’t think it was the curriculum. It would’ve helped if they had an awesome math teacher but they are just not mathy people — don’t like board games or puzzles either. They were excellent at reading and it came really easy to them and they had to work a little harder at math. They are also not sports people or very musical, but they loved theatre and art and were both good at languages.
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My kids were not keen on word problems. Or showing their work (“in real life I don’t know why you’d have to explain how to find then answer…. oh, well unless you write printer service manuals like Mom”). But they did love math. We still laugh over the time we came home to find them helping the babysitter (who was only 2 years older than the oldest) with her math homework.
I’ve heard that newer style SATs somehow integrate more word problems and chart interpretation… true?
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This is a first grade word problem worksheet. Notice you must know what a chef assistant, server, brownies, puddings, pasta salad are especially if you are from another country. And that cream of mushroom is actually a soup. There are even word problems that start in kindergarten.
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Well then I think a lot of 1st graders (unless end of school year) are going to struggle with that!
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Seriously! I would struggle with #2. Is pasta salad considered a dessert? Not in my book!
That was one thing older S did have a bit of a struggle with when he was sent to third grade math. His reading at the beginning was not up to the level of the third grade word problems. He’d see words - like in that example - and according to his teacher start to panic. She said, she would read him the problem and he’d have the answer before she was done reading. His reading did catch up fairly quickly, but that was an issue. I would have put that worksheet more on a 3rd to 4th grade level, and even then it’s a bit weird. Cream of mushroom?
Another issue was his handwriting. Writing out pages of things like “four thousand, six hundred, fifty-seven” is painful for anyone, but for a first grader with big huge letters? Ugh.
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I attended a presentation from an educator when my kids were young - the presenter discussed the fact that words matter. There are many kids who have no idea what a dishwasher is, for example. If a question asks which word doesn’t belong in a group of words, and a student has no clue what a dishwasher is, they will get stuck. We might know that there is a machine into which you can load dirty dishes & they will be automatically cleaned. But a kid who has no experience with dishwashers (other than human) tends to get distracted from the question because they are focusing on the fact that they don’t understand the word. The gist of the presentation was that keeping the experiences of the students being tested in mind is essential if you want to truly test them for understanding of what you actually want to test. It really opened my eyes and made me think.
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I also used that book to teach both of my kids to read. It’s pretty boring but it was quite effective. I never finished it with either kid because they starting reading well without the rest of the lessons. Only sad part is that my D stopped letting me read to her in first grade! I have very few memories of her in childhood without a book in her hand. My S was an excellent reader as well but he still indulged me and let me read to him. I really think that book set the stage for them being fast and strong readers.
Which is why reading books aloud and the “serve and return” of conversation is so important for kids who don’t read yet - books can serve as both mirrors/windows/sliding glass doors of life. What you know (mirrors), what you don’t know (windows into new things like dishwashers or culture or whatever) and sliding glass doors (ability to see/understand/feel empathy for others situations).
I was laid off during the dot.com bust 25yrs ago and took a tutoring job in a tough neighborhood in Brooklyn to pay the bills. Your dishwasher example rings very true. I remember working with a little boy on reading and one of the characters in the story had a very stereotypical white name…like Brad or or something like that and this little boy just couldn’t grasp that Brad (or whatever) could be a name of a person, he thought it was hysterical 
During the few months I worked there, there were lots of examples like that.
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Along the same lines, I live in a town adjacent to a Navy base in the desert so little kids associate the Navy with planes not boats. The story goes that there was a standardized test question many years back that all the kids missed because they chose the picture of the plane instead of the boat!
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And the adults would have circled both!
It is also a stretch that all first graders are expected to be able to read words like chef, vegetable, assistant, and dishwasher. When the words are challenging, the results may reflect reading ability more than math ability. Even if the words are something that a student can figure out, having 2 challenges (tricky words and also tricky math) may be more than a student can handle. During my years of homeschooling little kids I often found that my kids really struggled when there were 2 hard things to focus on. When handwriting was still new and also when composing a proper sentence was new, writing a well-composed sentence was nearly impossible while copying a sentence or verbally composing a sentence on the requested topic were both OK. Once one process (generally handwriting first) became automatic, then they could do it.
One of my kids was advanced in math but couldn’t write neatly enough to keep the numbers in lines for processes like long division. I scribed for a bit (kid was in K and it really was a lot of writing for that age) but finally hit on the idea of printing grids with squares the size of kid’s numbers. By writing in the squares the work stayed neat and the rate of math progression wasn’t limited by handwriting ability.
My training isn’t in education, but just from observing my kids and then volunteering for a long time I’ve learned enough to make me question whether the people devising some of these programs have ever tried to teach young children. It’s important to design materials such that the results accurately reflect the student’s understanding of the material that they are trying to learn. Otherwise remediation of missed content isn’t targeting the correct skills or knowledge.
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This is a worksheet from a free worksheet site. I don’t really know the websites worth - they actually don’t give much info about themselves to show their credibility. People like free though so parents may print things off with unrealistic expectations of what their child can or should do.
If this was part of an official curriculum we might know if this is intended for advanced 1st graders, all 1st graders, end of year 1st graders, etc.
And being picky, the choice of using the word “fridge” as opposed to “refrigerator” automatically reduces my trust!
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I’ve seen comparable work sent home with the public school kids that I help. I’ve read many word problems out loud to kids. Singapore math (which my kids used) sometimes had names or fruits that they didn’t recognize, but I would help them realize that it didn’t matter what they subbed in - just use the first letter (which is…practice with variables!) - but that also wasn’t in first grade.
Let me assure you that there are many comparable examples in the public schools.
The problem as I see it…if this is YOUR child with THIS type of work and they aren’t learning…what are your options? Home school, private school, teach at home to “get over the hurdle” , tutor? It is nearly impossible to fight the system unless you have a teacher who works with you–and then you aren’t “fighting the system” because actually you just got lucky and all the other kids are still mired in the quicksand. There is no way to effectively fight the system until your kid is OUT of the system. And then your voice means zero.
I can assure you that private schools also can not “tow the line” at times in terms of handing out inappropriate for all work.
I have experience both ways.
I’ll defend a general “public school” comment any day of the week, any time of the day. Let’s not pool a type of school all together under any circumstance
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A post in my neighborhood Facebook group today made me think of this thread:
“Is anyone a math or english tutor, or have a teen or college child that’s interested in being a tutor? I have toddlers, specifically my 4 y.o., that could benefit from external support when it comes to phonics/reading and math…”
Four? Summer tutoring? Whew…
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