Math Homework

I was just assisting Rayyan with his Taman Megah math homework just now. The Math homework is from the Math Activity book provided free by the Ministry of Education, published by Dewan Bahasa.

Without assistance, I doubt Year 1 kids can complete it alone without any mistakes. The writers seem to be plucking questions out of thin air and clearly not enough thought was put in place to come up with the questions. Bengong!

"5 kurang 4 daripada _____" - That's the whole question. Expecting a kid to understand. Although grammatically correct, the sentence could be at least rewritten so kids could understand just by reading it. Aku nak menjawab pun pikir 2-3 kali jugak. Dahle anak aku ni mat salleh celup, nak baca bahasa macam tu.

That's the problem with the school academic books nowadays. They are written from a writer's perspective, trying to follow what the curriculum wants, not from a learner's perspective, who is trying to learn a new skill of working with numbers, and not a skill to decipher questions like that.

And that's why my "local" book sells well overseas... hehehe. The trick is... assume everyone is stupid. Be stupid yourselves, and then everyone who works your activity book will be smart. If they are too smart to do it, they can easily skim through it and finish the work quickly.

Another thing about the question is that... the kids were only thought 1 less and 1 more than a number.. suddenly, there is this one question "5 kurang 4 daripada ___" asked just so the word "sembilan" can be written on the cross-word puzzle. There are many ways you can get the word "sembilan" to come out from a kid that age, and not by asking that "5 kurang 4 daripada ______" question. Takde pulak nak ajar kurang 2 drp, kurang 3 drp, etc sebelum tu... just to get the number "9" for the puzzle.. tu je...