DS wrote as an answer: "There are 70 lego pieces in a lego set. A set of legos containing 80 pieces comes in the mail. How many more legos are in the new set? 70+10=80 "
It was marked wrong and she was wrote in red "'comparing' means subtraction sentence. Or at least explain that the missing part is 10." Then she told me on the phone that DS didn't understand the the difference between the two sets is 10.
Clearly, the teacher doesn't understand the math. He wrote "how many more", and, really, "+10" is a perfectly reasonable example of that. It's ten more. But the teacher thinks "=80" is the answer, because it "=", and therefore he must be wrong.
Given that circumstance, myself, I would tend toward a kneejerk response of writing every answer in all their possible stupid ways. 70+10=80. 80-10=70. 80-70=10. That way, I'd be certain to hit on the right one at some point.
On the other hand, my response as a student might be to give up entirely.
And I'm so with you on the drawing thing. I kept asking that repeatedly when DS was in the lower grades -- is this math or art? He refused to draw all his addition and subtraction problems, too. DD now in 2nd grade likes to draw, so she can be found drawing pictures of everything even when they don't ask for it. It drives me to distraction when I'm walking her through her homework and she keeps stopping to draw pictures of apples and stuff. Gah!
