5th-Grade Math Assignment

Focus
This assignment is well-aligned with fifth-grade standard 5.NF.A.2. The standard requires students to solve word problems involving addition and subtraction of fractions, including fractions with unlike denominators, and this assignment contains multi-step word problems about subtracting fractions with unlike denominators. The standard also requires that students represent problems visually or symbolically. The lesson that accompanied this assignment used tape diagrams to represent problems visually and the directions for this assignment prompted students to use the read-draw-write (RDW) strategy to solve each problem. 

Rigor
This assignment builds students’ application skills, the aspect of rigor outlined in standard 5.NF.A.2. The standard calls for students to solve word problems involving addition and subtraction of fractions, and all five problems in this assignment are word problems that involve real-world situations. The standard also indirectly targets conceptual understanding because it requires students to represent problems visually and symbolically. The directions for the assignment asked students to represent each word problem with a drawing, which builds students’ conceptual understanding of fractional size as it relates to the same whole. 

Practice Standards
This assignment allows students to engage with two mathematical practice standards. Interpreting what the word problems are asking them to do gives students the chance to engage with Mathematical Practice Standard #1 ("Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them"). Although all five problems involved subtraction, students had to determine how many steps were needed to solve each problem and the order in which they should be completed. The directions for the assignment also prompted students to create drawings to represent each real-world scenario, which gives students the chance to engage with Mathematical Practice Standard #4 ("Model with mathematics").