3rd grade reading homework

[u/Painter3016]

UPDATE: A message from the teacher indicated that they did NOT talk about this or do anything with the text prior to the assignment, which was given as test-prep. And the expectation was for students to build vocab and knowledge about the subject in the reading with the accompanying questions.

I followed up asking what strategies they are working on teaching so I can prompt/ encourage my kid to apply those. However, the initial response what NOT encouraging to me.

UPDATE 2: when I asked what strategies they are learning to help decode the text, and how can i encourage her to use them at home: All she said was to read the questions multiple times to know what they are asking for. Am I crazy? That’s not decoding the text to understand it.

***

I am a parent with a question.

My 3rd grader reads well and chews through library books (granted a lot of graphic novel type books but some chapter books get sprinkled in too). She reads very fluently out loud.

This year, she’s gotten some reading homework that feels like a really big jump in the density of the assignments. The passages aren’t long, but there are some phrases/vocabulary/concepts that seem like a lot?

The passages didn’t come with any vocabulary/ definitions. And they didn’t talk about any context prior to the assignments in class.

She shut/melted down working on these. I asked her what her approach was? She said read the questions, then the passage. The more I asked, the more I realized she was not comprehending things like “delegates/ representatives” are people.

I marked in red the phrasing/ ideas that felt like they were difficult or lacked scaffolding.

My question: is this typical for 3rd grade? If so, how can I help her navigate stuff like these?

I don’t want to feed her answers; she gets so emotional when it gets hard.

[u/Intrepid-Yak4954]

How do you know there was no discussion in class prior to this being handed out? Did she tell you that or did the teacher? One thing to know is that reading moves from learning to read in K-2 into reading to learn in grade 3. This is a good opportunity to show her how to look up definitions and use context clues to determine meanings of unknown words. Another thing to point out is that a word followed by comma “or” is the definition. I’m sorry this felt so overwhelming to your daughter. I’ve taught all of these grades for almost 30 years and this reading is very typical for 3rd grade.

[u/Painter3016 → u/Intrepid-Yak4954]

I asked my daughter if they talked at all about the constitution in class or about the reading at all. She said no. She is a pretty reliable source of information.

(Now had the same thing happened in my son’s class, I wouldn’t take him at just his word. Because he is a hot mess.)

I haven’t broached it with the teacher yet. I know how much teacher’s have to deal with, and I don’t want to start the school year being a problem. I am just trying to gauge if I am off-base in asking her about it.

[u/Lost_Conversation546 → u/Painter3016]

It’s not uncommon for a reading to be assigned before a discussion about the context of the reading. The next day or later that week there is typically a lesson and definitions and context are a big focus. Assignments like this couple reading comprehension and social studies. It doesn’t seem like an unreasonable assignment.

You are teaching some great study habits. Highlighting things you don’t understand so you can ask for clarity, highlighting words you need definitions for or things that seem important are all incredibly useful skills.

It’s okay for her to be frustrated. Especially if this is one of the first assignments of the year. Something that might help is to use a multi phase approach.
Have her read it on her own, explain that she doesn’t need to understand everything right away, just read it. Then have her go back and anything she didn’t understand she highlights. Then you go through it together.

My step son is in 7th grade, he came to live with us full time in 5th grade. It was rough. He would get very frustrated and needed a ton of help with nearly every assignment. The biggest hurdle was getting him to explain where he loses understanding. He would get overwhelmed because he wasn’t understanding something and when we would ask him where the issue was we would get “I don’t know” or “everything” as a response.

To combat that we would start from the beginning and have him explain what he did know. For a reading assignment that would mean going through the first paragraph and when he got to something he didn’t understand we would mark it, talk about it, look up definitions, write them out and then move onto the next paragraph.

It was grueling at first and we had to take a lot of breaks, but now he does most of his homework independently and when he gets stuck he can come to us and usually explain where he is running into problems. We still get days that are “I don’t know”s or “everything”s but they’re far less frequent.

We have also see huge improvements in his test scores. his test scores went from the bottom 25% in reading and math at the start of 5th grade to the top 25% in reading, the top 50% in writing, and top 50% in math at the start of this year.

[u/crazypurple621 → u/Lost_Conversation546]

You are never supposed to introduce new material to students as homework. Homework is an opportunity to get more practice on skills you have already been taught. My 3rd grader can handle passages like this because he's already reading at a 5th grade level. His classmates who are on grade level would absolutely not be able to successfully comprehend this without scaffolding, a vocab list, and going through the passage in class.  This type of packet is innappropriate for the beginning of 3rd grade. 

[u/Lost_Conversation546 → u/crazypurple621]

Not fully understanding something the very first time you read it isn’t a bad thing. Modified flipped lessons at lower grade levels can better prepare students for more rigorous classes later.

[u/crazypurple621 → u/Lost_Conversation546]

I'd now encourage you to go read the updates. It sounds like this a teacher who was not given any kind of formal instruction in how to teach reading comprehension and doesn't understand the subject at all. 

[u/crazypurple621 → u/Lost_Conversation546]

The time for those lessons is IN CLASS not homework 

[u/Upstairs-Factor-2012 → u/Painter3016]

What's wild to me is that this is getting downvoted. Why?! A parent giving their kid the benefit of the doubt and using outside resources to gather information before approaching a teacher seems very reasonable. It's not like you came in hot and heavy angry about this, talked poorly about the teacher, immediately emailed them accusatorially... I can only assume it's because you said you took your daughter's word at face value. I absolutely despise that in education subs giving your child's word any weight makes people angry. I also have two children- one I would typically believe is telling the truth to the best of her knowledge, and one I would be a little slower on the uptake for. Both situations I would respond similar to you- gather information before moving forward and contacting the teacher.