Originally Posted by blackcat
There is a girl in the cluster group who is getting over 99.9 percentile on the MAP-like testing because she has been extensively after-schooled. Her mom lent me her completed/returned enrichment packet #1 so I could see what they are doing. Even she got about half of the problems wrong at first. How she was able to go back and figure out the correct answers without help, I don't know. Or maybe the teacher was helping her but DD hasn't gotten help yet.
One of the questions shows a table which shows there were 75 peppers picked and the total weight of items picked was 15 pounds. Question: what is the average weight of the peppers? How would a kid figure this out if they had not been introduced to mean/median/average, etc.?
Another problem is
"Five different varieties of flowers are growing in the garden: carnations, roses, mums, marigolds, and lilies. Peter and Juanita are responsible for picking flowers and arranging them in vases to sell. They use three different types of flowers in each vase. How many different combinations can be made from the five varieties of flowers?"
If they could talk to each other and figure out a strategy for how to solve this (with teacher intervening if they can't get it), it would be fine, but the kids are just left to try to get it on their own. The teacher did write on the paper "There are more combinations than 6" when the kid got it wrong the first time. But DD got her enrichment pack back and says she still has no idea what to do on that problem. I haven't seen it because it doesn't come home until they get everything correct. She may be on packet #1 the entire year!

I sent an email (with a return receipt since she never replied to the last email I sent) saying that I would be happy to come in and help the cluster group with math. We'll see if she replies.

FWIW "average" is a red herring. Just assume they're the same weight and divide.

The 2nd problem is about combinations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinations
The answer is "5 choose 3" which is 10. The students would have no way of knowing that theory, but they could just systematically list the possibilities:
ABC
ABD
ABE
ACD
ACE
ADE
BCD
BCE
BDE
CDE

That said, you're right that they should be put in a group and explicitly instructed.