1st grade math question - word problems

[dantesmama]

My 5yo ds is doing Math Mammoth 1A and he's been doing great - I just have a question about the word problems. When we read the problem, he can almost immediately tell me the answer, but he can't tell me *how* he reached it. For example, "If you have eight dollars and a gift for mom costs ten dollars, how much more money do you need?" He knew right away he needed two more dollars, but I had to lead him through it and draw him a picture for him to understand that the addition sentence for the problem was 8+2=10. I think maybe he is just picturing the situation in his head?

Anyway, I'm wondering if we should be working on this more until he "gets" it, or if this is fine for now and that ability will come with time. Any thoughts?

Thanks!

[Max'sMama]

I have a 1st grader that does that and there are days he can't tell me what 3+1 is.  It's completely maddening.  I don't feel the process is necessary now.  If he knows the answer he will eventually come to how he got there.  It will work it's way out.  Same as walking and talking and drawing and reading and.......

[moominmamma]

Originally Posted by dantesmama 

For example, "If you have eight dollars and a gift for mom costs ten dollars, how much more money do you need?" He knew right away he needed two more dollars, but I had to lead him through it and draw him a picture for him to understand that the addition sentence for the problem was 8+2=10. 

This is a kid who has good number sense. He knows that 10 is 2 more than 8. So when he hears the word problem, he just thinks "2!" It's similar to what you might do if you there were only three clean mugs in the cupboard for your family of four to have hot chocolate. You'd go an wash one more. You wouldn't think to yourself "Hmm, 3+1=4, so I need one more" you'd just grab another mug. And honestly, to me the word problem you suggested is actually a subtraction problem: it's about the difference between 10 and 8, something your ds may not have the mathematical vocabulary for yet. Which makes his confusion quite understandable to me.

Learning to codify numerical relationships using arithmetical operations is a necessary skill ... for later. But for a kid with good number sense, it will seem really pointless at this 1st grade level. Your ds will wonder why he needs to conceptualize this simple, self-evident numerical relationship as an addition problem in order to arrive at an answer he already knows. To him it will feel like translating an English question into Spanish, answering it in Spanish and translating the answer back into English. He already knows the answer in English, so what's the point? 

Rather than insisting he arrive at his answer by codifying it through addition, I would just explain that "Mathematicians would write this as an adding problem like this... Here's the money you have, and the extra money you need. And together they add up to the price of the coat. Neat, huh? See how that fits with the same solution you figured out?"

"Part plus part equals total" and "Total minus part equals part" are ideas that helped my kids gradually learn to create equations from these most basic of word problems. But with this really basic arithmetic, when they could see their way to the answer, I didn't insist they do that on their own. They grew into it as the problems got more complex, when they needed the arithmetic algorithms in order to get to the answer.

Miranda

[dantesmama]

Ok, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you so much!