Reply to Benchmark questions for 3rd grader have me questioning my sanity

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[quote=Anonymous]I am totally willing to believe this is my own and my kid's own problem-- if you can "show evidence from the text" that's the case.  :P

This is very TL;DR, so be forewarned.

My bright kid, who tests extremely well in reading comprehension, is becoming so frustrated with the paragraph prompts from her Benchmark reading (literature and social studies).

I looked at them, and I'm right there with her.

A good percentage of the questions are just... so esoteric or poorly-written or... seemingly just plain silly? Nearly tautological? I am a 43-year-old writer, and I find them really challenging to answer, or to know what the writers are looking for in response.

"Why is it important to understand how a character's actions affect the events of a story?"

How would you, commenter on DCUM, answer that question? I mean, I can come up with an answer, though I think the question is nearly word salad. It's the kind of thing that seems like a fine question, I understand all of the words in it, but an answer is... what? There are so many dependencies, it's like a nested equation of generic literary terms. It feels like AI wrote it.

"It is important to understand how a character's actions affect the events of a story because understanding that gives you a window into their motivations, thoughts, feelings...?" No, that doesn't exactly answer the question, does it? The question is about how a character's actions affect the events of the story. Perhaps we can call that "plot." So how do the character's actions affect the plot? Well, mostly (not always) they... cause events in the plot. Or they react to them, but that doesn't necessarily "affect" those events. Or the character's actions[i] are[/i] the events in the plot. (Note this question is not about one specific character! It's a general question!)

So, okay, "why is it important to understand" [i]that[/i]? Um, I guess... it's important to understand that actions cause or are events so that... we understand... characters drive a plot? And why is that... important? So we can pay more attention to characters? For... reasons? Ummm...

Maybe the answer is obvious to you! I find it challenging.

I could even say, "Well, I think what they're[i] trying[/i] to ask is [something more comprehensible]" but that requires me to figure out what I think they meant to ask, and not answer the question they actually asked.

Other questions seem hastily pasted together, like this one:

"Write a paragraph explaining what were [sic] the sequential text connections in 'African Americans Win the Right to Vote?' [sic-- it's titled differently] How did these text connections help you understand how African Americans won the right to vote?"

I assume this started out as a simple "What were the sequential text connections..." but they decided to slap on a "Write a paragraph explaining," which challenged my kid to come up with at least 2 more sentences answering the second part of the question, which seems to be asking, "How did words like 'so' and 'then' and 'after that,' help you understand... how African Americans won the right to vote?" She did answer that those words show order and cause and effect, but it was challenging because those answers seemed "too obvious" and "stupid" to her. The ambiguity of the word "how" is also challenging here because the words in question help you know "[i]how[/i] it went down" in history, kind of, but they do NOT necessarily tell you "[i]how[/i] they achieved the thing," which is more like "they boycotted and marched and so on," which is where I think a kid's mind would go, rendering the question even more confusing...  Sigh.

If these questions are cobbled together, that might explain why some of them ask pretty esoteric questions that require inference (fine!) but then say "Illustrate your answer with 2-3 examples from the text" of which there either aren't any examples, or they're only implied, which seems like a challenging request of 8-year-olds to "find in the text." I'm starting to suspect they just slap "Write a paragraph explaining" and "show evidence from the text" on every question, even when it's not helpful or applicable.

I searched DCUM and only found one comment decrying these questions as baffling-- obviously I concur. Some were frustrated that they don't have "one right answer," and that is definitely not my complaint. I think the idea behind these (?) questions promotes deeper thinking, but they... kinda suck.

Are your kids acing them? Maybe it's just us?

And if so, please share your secrets on how to break these down![/quote]

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