Think Outside the Box...

Elijah came to me yesterday with his math homework, very proud of what he had done. The question read (to the best of my knowledge, as my french is a bit rusty!):

You have 165 snowballs and 34 of them melt. Write a mathematical sentence to represent the situation.

The correct answer, of course, would be 165 - 34 = 131.

Elijah wrote: 165 x 1 + 34 - 34 = 131

I felt really bad making him redo it, as he was so proud. I explained that it was very cool he had figured that out, but that wasn't what the teacher was looking for. He said, "I just wanted to make a complicated sentence instead of that boring one!". Something tells me we have a very long road ahead of us in public school!