1st grade Everyday Math Family Letter "What's my Rule?" 5.2

I get that there are rules to follow. I like rules, and use them liberally around my house- I think I am pretty clear when I dole them out, like, "Please do not climb the doorjambs. We do not live in a cage at the zoo". Or, " Eat your vegetables or you will not get dessert". So when I come across rules that are #$%*ed up, it makes me mad. It makes me wonder, "is it just me, or are these Everyday Math people messing with me?"

Last night's Family letter is all about "What's My Rule?". It concerns a little diagram of their "function machine". Students drop a number into the funnel at the top, it passes through the rule part, and comes out the funnel at the bottom changed as per the "rule" section. For example, the rule could be plus one, so drop the number one in the top funnel, it adds one in the rule part, and comes out as a two. Seems simple enough, right?

So when my first grader started grousing "I don't get it", all I could think was, "nooooo I thought I was safe till 3rd grade..." and looked at the worksheet. Seems the last example of their machine was unclear. Instead of the "missing rule" having a question mark where the rule should have been, the rule (a plus) was there. The question mark was in the place of the number. Shown inside the box as the missing rule was a "+?". That would have been ok, except that the equation was a subtraction! So with the numbers THEY provided to solve the problem, it looked like 6 +?=4. Chase was perplexed, as was I until I realized that the example needed the student to replace the rule AND the number. Two separate issues. In my opinion, the example SHOULD have been written as "??" or ?2". Then the durn machine would have worked!

This is not an easy thing to write about, and I am sorry I do not have a virtual chalkboard like Salman Kahn. But I can tell you that this morning in 1st grade, our teacher asked how homework went last night, and one kid said "there was a mistake. One problem should have been a minus". Proof enough for me!