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Two vectors without direction.

Derive the magnitude of the third vector if the sum of the vectors is zero.

Even in a One-D world, there are two possibilities.

In a two-D world, the solution is an infinite set.


I'd fire the teacher for making assumptions and retain your son for asking questions. Good for him.

DD5 drew a picture of the U.S. Capitol Building on the sidewalk with chalk yesterday :-) We live in South Florida; she's never been north of Georgia.

My DS has been writing and illustrating books with a couple of friends at school. I was thrilled with this already, but today he told me that after he and his friends started producing these books, the other kids in the class liked the idea and began to follow suit. Now the teacher has set up a little library in the classroom of all their books.

This made me happy for so many reasons. Despite the fact that he is a very outgoing and fun kid, I have worried about his friendship making because of his SPD (he tends to invade personal space, touch people too often and too hard) so to see him spontaneously working together with a group of friends on a project like this warms my heart. And to see him playing a leadership role in the class and inspiring other kids to be creative too, well that is just fantastic!

Oh for heaven's sakes, lucounu, that is just ridiculous! Sounds like the teacher is the one with the difficulty with word problems. I hope he recognizes that he is right and doesn't take her criticism to heart.

Start it, and they will come! But yes, well done him, and I'm sorry he had to deal with the teacher not understanding. Did he put a copy of his diagram in his answer, or simply write that there wasn't enough information? If the latter, this is a teachable moment that when you want to convince someone of something they aren't likely to want to believe, you have to give more detailed arguments than when they will want what you say to be true! (This will stand him in good stead later :-)

Thanks, people. Yep, the diagram was on the answer sheet.

I wound up submitting scans of three worksheets, including that one, to the TAT team, at the risk of angering his teacher, to show why the current system isn't working. Anyone can make mistakes, but I really think he deserves to be taught math by a person (and preferably one who has somewhat of a feel for math), instead of being parked in front of a computer or just left to do worksheets. No matter who was administering these worksheets, the communication is just too restricted to constitute teaching, nor is he being taught to a curriculum or at the right level.

Awesome story!

Iucounu, while I understand your frustration, we have had many incidents like this, and I think it's important to encourage kids to look for "the answer the teacher wants." Yes, your son is right, and I would tell him that he is right, but I also would have him write the answer the teacher wants. If you wanted to, he could then write in the margin why the question is confusing. There is so much danger of overthinking and then responding "wrong" to poorly written questions with these kids. It's a life skill to know what is actually being asked and at what level--albeit a depressing one. Now, I would agree that his response IS evidence of a child who is thinking at a higher level and who needs more challenge.

p

We talked about what the intent of the problem writer must have been, but he still gave the right answer and I think that's best. If this were a computer-graded test that mattered, without any option for "insufficient info" as an answer, I might think it was for the best to intentionally give a wrong answer, but not when a human's supposed to be grading it. If he winds up a person who's sometimes thought to be wrong but can always prove himself right, I'll be happy. I could probably have him work on explaining himself with more than one sentence in addition to a diagram or something, but I'm also hoping these bum questions don't pop up often. (ETA: I guess I could see having him explain "X yards would be a wrong answer, because...", but I can't contemplate him actually giving it as an answer.)

Here, the teacher either doesn't understand how to do math problems very well, or she didn't give it a passing thought despite his answer and diagram, and also may have wanted to mark him wrong to prove a point that he's not infallible and/or not at as high a level as his testing and previous learning suggests.

This shows the problem with having him not actually being taught by a person in my opinion. With a halfway decent math teacher in a class, the teacher would have understood his explanation or asked for more info, and DS would have been able to explain in class as well. I'm not so worried about him missing a life skill here as not being given what everyone else at the school gets-- instruction. I'd feel differently if the teacher, despite not getting it, had asked for more info. And the diagram makes it pretty obvious. (In a different case, he gave the correct answer and the teacher graded him wrong without apparently looking at the answer sheet.)