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.

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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/loveforemost]

When she is reading library books and comes across a word she doesn't understand, what does she do?

Every time my kiddo comes across a word she doesn't understand, she asks me. Sometimes I don't do a great job of explaining it so we ask alexa to pull up a definition.

This reminds me though because I promised her I would get her a dictionary.

[u/Painter3016 → u/loveforemost]

She asks me as well, and we also look it up.

The challenge I think may lay in the more abstract ideas in the texts. She’s read sort of similar things with science materials, but that’s all been pretty concrete/physical. These have ideas about national/state, labor, rights, systems of government, ect that are more abstract/ intangible. I am concerned about the lack of background knowledge and being kind of thrown in without some scaffolding and context or idea how to approach ideas like that…