Addition Word Problems Worksheets Grade 5: Fill & Download for Free

This appears to be a question frequently asked by more than a few parents.The overall affirmative answer to this is ‘No!’ In fact, the Kumon programs make a compelling argument about why education should not be relegated to a franchised business. (A child’s) Education should never be offered for sale in a marketplace the same way as hamburgers or coffee are. From a lack of qualified (so-termed) ‘Instructors’, to coverage of less than 44% of mandated curricula, to a variety of other disqualifiers, Kumon is far less helpful to students than many unwitting families are led to believe. The bottom line: If your child is not being academically mentored by a qualified educator – and if the pedagogical material used in the program is not relevant to what she or he is doing in school – what is the point of the education program?After operating a Kumon Math & Reading Center franchise for close to a decade, I feel obliged to offer an objective critique and the following facts - based on documents, communication, and experience I accumulated during my tenure as a Kumon franchisee - in the hope that it helps to answer the question about whether Kumon is effective in improving children’s math skills.The Kumon 'Math' program is greatly overrated in terms of its benefit to students. In fact it is largely inefficient and, in some instances, downright ineffective – not worth the investment of time and money for a number of reasons:- First, there is a difference between 'Arithmetic' and 'Math'. Use of the term 'Math' to refer to an Arithmetic program is misleading and a misrepresentation ... unwitting or otherwise. The majority of standardized tests (such as the SAT and ACT) present students with word-problem based challenges that transcend mere arithmetic (in other words, Math), with an assumption of underlying arithmetic skills. Arithmetic worksheets are abundantly available via any number of Internet websites at minimal cost (including Free!). These represent a credible alternative to the Kumon ‘Math’ program.- The Kumon 'Math' program emphasizes rote learning. 'Rote' learning is a very shallow form of accumulating knowledge. Sure, students need to memorize basic addition, subtraction, and multiplication facts at the beginning of their (Math) academic journey. However, to cobble this together in a 21-level series of arithmetic worksheets and call it a 'Math' program is deceitful.- Then there is the issue of curricula coverage. Based on a Kumon publication, the Kumon 'Math' program offers less than 44% of what students are supposed to cover - on average - between Grades 1 and 8. And, to achieve that 44% of curricula coverage, it is necessary for the student to complete literally hundreds (if not thousands) of worksheets. Then, after doing the same tired worksheets two, three, four, or more times, the net curricula coverage remains at < 44% - at which time the student may have moved on to the next grade level at school. By Grade 9 and beyond, the Kumon Math program offers nothing in common with High School Math.- Lack of Kumon 'Instructor' Math expertise. While applying for the Kumon franchise, I was astonished to note that a Grade 6 level of Math (by the franchisor's metric) was all that was required to open a Kumon Center. In fact, there was at least one Kumon franchisee in the system at the time who did not have a post-secondary degree. Such Kumon franchisees are 'experts' at Math only when she or he has the Arithmetic 'Answer Book' for the level handy.- I noted that fewer than a handful of Kumon franchisees had any formal training in education ... (other than that mandated by the franchisor, which was to complete thousands of worksheets). This “training” does not teach Kumon franchisees anything about education.- Then there is the matter of the 'independent learning method’ prescribed by the franchisor. This may have more to do with a franchisee’s necessity to have dozens of students working in a Kumon Center with a very minimal level of support available to help any student if the franchisee’s monthly bills are to be paid. The vast majority of elementary school students simply do not have an ability - or inclination – to learn independently. This is a myth propagated by Kumon.- Kumon franchisees are compensated financially for having students on the so-termed 'ASHR' (Advanced Student Honor Roll) list. This precipitates artificial progression of students through levels (possibly without confirming ‘mastery’, another overused Kumon mythical term). The adjective ‘advanced’ needs context. Without aligning with a curricula standard, what is ‘Advanced’ compared against?- Something of a ('technical') education resource design nature? If so, that addresses the matter of Scope and Sequence. The scope of each Kumon level is completely out of sequence with how students cover math in mainstream school systems. And, the super-stacking of 200 worksheets to cover multiplication or division (for example) ends up being highly-ineffective. Why? Because young children often forget how to do this in subsequent levels. This is an important consideration in a child’s education. Unfortunately, it’s another significantly-flawed assumption on the part of Kumon about how young minds function – presented by Kumon in their inclination towards corporate profitability over value delivered to their (student) client families.- While I did have all student worksheets marked at my Kumon Center, parents might question whether their child’s Kumon Center is adhering to a similar level of professionalism. How are parents assured about how their daughter or son is truly doing or progressing in the Kumon programs?- It was not lost on me during my tenure as a Kumon franchisee that a few students did strengthen their arithmetic skills doing Kumon ‘Math’. However, I also know that the students in this category (less than 5%) would have done well in math without Kumon anyway … particularly if the student had had access to a qualified educator (or tutor) with credible resources to learn from. And, the number of children who were brought to tears because of the punishing (and ultimately useless) worksheets far outnumbered the few that gained anything from their Kumon experience.Finally, parents are better advised to have their child tested against a known education standard in order to determine the child’s level of development in mathematics or English language, and then seek a credible remedial program or course of action, as they would for any other important consideration related to the child's well-being. Entrusting a child's academic future to someone who knows very little about education - and who is offering a program that is more than minimally lacking in many aspects, might not be the wisest parental decision on the child’s behalf.

The simple response to this is ‘No!’ From a lack of qualified so-termed ‘Instructors’, to less than 44% curricula coverage, to a variety of other disqualifiers, Kumon is far less helpful to students than many families might realize.Let's consider the Kumon 'Reading' program first; it's the more straightforward one to easily disqualify as a credible education program. In short, it is not an 'English Language’ program – more often than not delivered by people who do not communicate in English as a first language.The placement tests for the Kumon ‘Reading’ program are convoluted, and – like the ones for the ‘Math’ program – are expressly designed to place the student at the lowest starting point. I often saw it to be a disheartening waste of (a student’s) time to start a Grade 8 or Grade 9 student with Grade 3 or Grade 4 material. That student has little hope of ever getting to grade level in a timeline that would be beneficial for him or her to seriously consider doing Kumon in the first place.The Kumon 'Math' program is greatly overrated in terms of its benefit to students; in fact it is largely inefficient and in many instances downright ineffective – and not worth the investment of time and money for a number of reasons:- First, there is a difference between 'Arithmetic' and 'Math'. Use of the term 'Math' to refer to an Arithmetic program is misleading and a misrepresentation ... unwitting or otherwise. The majority of standardized tests offered in mainstream academia (such as the SSAT, PSAT, SAT, and ACT) present students with word problem -based challenges that transcend mere arithmetic (in other words, Math), with an assumption of underlying arithmetic skills. Arithmetic worksheets are abundantly available via any number of Internet websites at minimal cost (including Free!). Many of these represent very viable alternatives to the Kumon ‘Math’ program at a fraction of the cost.- The Kumon 'Math' program emphasizes rote learning. However, 'Rote' learning is a very shallow form of accumulating knowledge. Sure, students need to memorize basic addition, subtraction, and multiplication facts. But to cobble this together in a 21-level series of arithmetic worksheets and call it a 'Math' program is deceptive.- The issue of curricula coverage is one that undermines the ability of the Kumon ‘Math’ program to be considered a credible mathematics program. Based on a Kumon publication, the Kumon 'Math' program offers less than 44% of what students are supposed to cover - on average - between Grades 1 and 8. And, to realize that 44% of curricula coverage, it is necessary for the student to complete literally hundreds (if not over a thousand) worksheets. Plus, after doing the same tired worksheets two, three, four, or more times, the net curricula coverage remains at < 44%. By Grade 9 and beyond, the Kumon Math program has nothing in common with High School Math.- Lack of Kumon 'Instructor' expertise. While applying to operate a Kumon franchise, I was surprised to note that a Grade 6 level of Math (by the franchisor's metric) was all that was required to open a Kumon Center. Kumon franchisee Instructors are often perceived as 'experts' at Math; however, this is only for the time that she or he has the Arithmetic 'Answer Book' for the level in hand. Additionally, the majority of Kumon franchisees could not list English as a native language, and there was at least one Kumon franchisee in the system at the time who did not have any post-secondary education- I noted that less than a handful of Kumon franchisees had any training as educators ... other than that mandated by the franchisor (which was to complete thousands of worksheets), but still not learning anything about education.- Then, there is the matter of the assumed 'independent learning' often presented by the franchisor. This may have more to do with a franchisee’s necessity to have dozens of students working in a Kumon Center with a very minimal level of support available to help students if the franchisee’s monthly bills (> $3500/month lease, > 35% Franchisor Royalty Fee, utilities, program supplies, and Staff) are to be paid. The vast majority of Elementary School students often do not have the ability - or inclination – to learn independently. This is a myth propagated by Kumon.- Kumon franchisees are compensated financially for having students on the so-termed 'ASHR' (Advanced Student Honor Roll) list. This precipitates artificially quick progression of students through levels (possibly without confirming ‘mastery’, another overused Kumon mythical term). What does the term 'Advanced' mean anyway? Without aligning with a curricula standard, what is ‘Advanced’ compared to?- Something of an education resource design or pedagogical consideration ... that addresses the matter of Scope and Sequence. The Scope of each Kumon level is completely out of sequence with how students cover math in mainstream school systems. And, the super-stacking of 200 worksheets to cover multiplication or division (for example) ends up being highly-ineffective. Why? Because young children often forget how to do this in future levels. Again, it’s a significantly-flawed assumption on the part of Kumon about how young minds process and retain information.- While I did have all student worksheets marked at my Kumon Center, parents might question whether other Kumon Centers are adhering to a similar level of franchise operation or code of conduct? In other words, how are parents assured of how their daughter or son is truly doing or progressing in the Kumon programs?- It was not lost on me during my tenure as a Kumon franchisee that a few students did strengthen their arithmetic skills doing Kumon ‘Math’. However, I also know that the students in this category (less than 5%) would've done well in Math without Kumon anyway … particularly if the student had had access to a qualified educator (or tutor) with credible resources to learn from. And, the number of children who were brought to tears because of the punishing worksheets far outnumbered the few that gained anything from their Kumon experience.Parents simply need to have their child tested against a known education standard in order to determine their child’s level of development in mathematics or English language, and then seek an effective remedial program or course of action, as they would for any other important consideration about the child's life. Entrusting a child's academic future to someone who knows nothing about education - and who is offering a program that is more than minimally-lacking in many aspects - may not be the wisest decision.The bottom line: If your child is not being mentored by a qualified educator – and with material that is not relevant to what she or he is doing in school – what is the point of the education program?

Some context: I have two kids, only one of which is still in elementary school. We are a family who is more than math literate — we both use advanced math in our every day professions, and I have learned math in 3 different school systems (Romanian, French and US), plus a lot of individual work. I have recognized what worked from the preschool years, and how difficult some of those skills are to come by later on. As I see my child struggle with the present math curriculum, I feel rather strongly about some facts. What follows is a critique of the pacing used in my state — not a core curriculum state, but one that adheres to the core rather tightly and uses enVision Math, a Core curriculum implementation as its foundation. So I believe this is relevant across the board.Early skills are not taught in preschools. Skills like adding and subtracting with physical objects (little sticks, pebbles, lego pieces) ought to be taught in preschool. A kid should walk into Kindergarten and 1st grade with a clear understanding of:How grouping of pieces does not change the total. Group with pebbles, little sticks, pennies or buttons! my 10 sticks can be 1+ 9 or 4+6, etc… and still stay 10 altogether.Little memorization and visualization help is better than rote: Feel on fingers how grouping 8 fingers leaves 2 out of the 10 fingers free. I still pair up 7 with 3, and see the image of my hands when thinking of 10–7 in any context! 7–3;6–4, 5–5.How one can count large sets by making smaller groups of 5, 10, 25, 30, etc. How those groups can also be grouped. (“feel” the foundation of a numeric system before they dive too hard into the base 10 system). Use that when playing games and in every day tasks. (Count this stack of m&ms, or “is this a complete deck of 52 cards?”) Learn to count to 100 in a different language is also extremely helpful, as they get exposed to how many people resolve the problem of grouping.At-a-glance estimation of small (1–10) quantities: play with dice, dominos and playing cards, which all provide a visual cue to what a number represents. When I say 5, I always see the 4 corners with a dot in the middle. 6 is always 2x3, 9 is a perfect square of 3, etc. Think dice face or domino face. Incredibly helpful in mental math later on.Repeated practice in dividing cards, toys, etc “fairly”, and the reality that often, there will be some pieces left behind. Quotient and remainder. When kids play on a tablet, they miss out on the messiness that “dividing fairly” teaches, when physical objects are being used.Incremental adding and subtracting, with physical objects. If I have a tower of 5 pieces and I add 2, i get a taller tower of 7. Estimating differences “how much taller is this stack than that one?” (Europeans have a game with tiles, called Rummy, where one starts by organizing tiles by stacks of similar height. Same can happen with domino pieces. “This is too short — i need 2 more tiles”.Develop the “language” of math early — especially if the child seems a bit delayed with speech. “4 more than Lisa’s” is a complicated English phrase to parse. Too many kids have trouble in 3rd grade, when word problem are finally introduced, with understanding such expression from a language point of view. These children end up giving up because “math” is hard! So start early, when their brains are in language acquisition mode.How to divide “fairly” strings, sheets of paper or pies in half, quarters and thirds. I sometimes lead art projects — you would be surprised how few 3 or 4th graders can actually take a piece of paper and divide it in 3 or 4 equal sides. That is, however, a classic preschool skill to learn. Having a mental representation of what that looks like is of huge importance later on.How to classify things according to multiple criteria, and check for inclusion in a set. (yes, set functions!) (Red apples and green apples are both apples)How big is a kilogram and how small is a gram. I used to go to the farmer’s market with my grandmother, and each stand used to have a balance type scale (rather than today’s electronics ones), so there was always a visual representation of what a kilogram was. Same with a liter, and a meter / centimeter. Having labeled weights in every classroom, using rulers, etc is important.Jo Boaer, an education researcher focusing on math acquisition proposes the above skills as fundamental. Problem is, she sees them as elementary-level tools. I believe these skills need to be introduced much earlier on, because quantitative thinking does develop at the same time as language, and *it takes time* to learn. Starting with early preschool games is how many eastern european countries do it, and it simply works. Go visit your nearest Russian Language Immersion preschool to see it in gloriously fun action!In our not-Russian preschool, my kids were asked to remember some basic additions, were taught the foundations of reading and not much math at all. Even in a montessori setting, the beads counting was left for the later years (K and school-age), when the point is actually that early brains need these manipulatives during the very formation of their brains. Instead, when my daughter showed interest, she was shown how to do additions with regrouping… neat, but useless at that age.Once school started, more challenges became apparent:2. the material was divided into neat “Units”, each completely self-contained and graded. The “circular” approach means each unit builds on a similar unit learned… exactly one year before. That’s right — after the child is done with the 2-4 weeks of estimations, they can safely forget it until next year. Next year, they will be taught that same concept again and, if time allows, they might learn a modest extension to the concept. Addition in K is single digit. 1st grade adds regrouping. 2nd grade is up to 100, 3rd grade to 1000 and so on… none of the adition units last longer than 2–3 weeks. Kids are not encouraged to completely “own” adding with regrouping — the victory of adding large sums, in the early grades is not afforded to them (even though it’s a skill that preschool teachers thought nothing of showing to the interested children!). That worksheet with 20 additions could just as easily have become 1 question, using a large, 20-digit numbers. What kid would not beam at the end of that single-question homework?! And both would offer the same amount of practice — early in 1st grade, leaving the later years free to explore adding and subtracting with positive and negative numbers, long multiplications and divisions, etc. If the rest of the units keep referring to these skills, no more need for a major recap at the beginning of each year…3. There is no progression between units. One learns fractions in 2nd grade without first understanding multiplications and divisions. That means they cannot go beyond representation. For many kids, this is not very meaningful, because they cannot “do” much with this. But it does “check” the point that 2nd graders “know” fractions. It is a point of pride for the district and maybe the teacher, but leaves the child with more questions than it answers. Why not wait a bit on fractions?4. There is a clear demarcation between the “numeric math”, taught in the 1st 2 quarters of every year, and the “non-numeric math” (polygons, measurements, probabilities, graphs) taught in the 3rd quarter. Since the latter part does not reference back concepts learned in the early part of the year, this amounts to a “vacation from math” of 6 or more months, every single year. At a time when educators are recommending we give up the summer break, the curriculum itself introduces a break more than twice as long!Integrating numerics into the concepts taught in the later part of the years should be a breeze. In fact, all the representational concepts could be fitted as exloration topics throughout the year. The metric system works wonderfully well to illustrate decimals on a number line (metric tape!), multiplication and division by powers of 10, etc. The “imperial” units are a wonderful extension for fractions operations. My older child graduated elementary school at a well-regarded public school without ever needing to figure out when two cars will meet when travelling at different speeds, or how much time will a reservoir take to fill up when there is both a tap and a drain. Those are wonderful preparation questions for algebra, work on measurements and units and exercise numerics. Everywhere else in the world, they are a rite of passage. With a 7th grader and a 4th grader, I’m yet to see something like this come home. No wonder, my 7th grader had trouble with the concept of negative integer operations in 6th grade. All the above are extensions to elementary operations that children could take on later in the school year. Instead, the second part of the year ends up being a lot of rote memorization. (What is a heptagon?). 3rd grade should already learn how to compute the area of a triangle and therefore, how to apply a formula! They can just use their fresh multiplication skills!5. Little attention is given to the written aspects of math, well until middle school when algebra starts to be taught. All numerical operations happen vertically, on a scratch pad. Sloppy notations such as 6+-9=? are used. Everything happens on sheets of paper easily lost and with little value to a child. Yet suddenly, they are expected to be able to write down steps for resolving an equation (horizontal notation), without having gotten into the habit of writing horizontally, for meaning. Even word problems are solved with a simple vertical addition, instead of taking the time to explain how to “spell the problem” using simple algebraic terms. “7+x=10, therefore x = 7” is a fine answer to the word problem “Angies ribbon is 10 yards and Kate’s is 7. How much longer is Angie’s ribbon than Kate’s?”) Instead, kids are taught to scribble a vertical 10–7 and be done. The truth is, algebraic notations are just a language. Learn it early = learn it well. By middle school, it’s a big effort, because the horizontal writing was never used. By the time kids have to create geometric proofs or simplify complex expressions, they now also need to learn this new language. It’s such a small change, with such great implications…6. In geometry, rather than focus on labels, i would look again at connections with the numerical part of the curriculum. perimeters with additions and subtractions, areas and volume with multiplication and division and exponents, with extensions into decimal systems. Why not teach about triangle similarity when learning about fractions, proportions, rates and percents? Pi when learning about decimals and relationships to fractions… etc.6. Another side effect of the circular curriculum is that children never feel they have “mastered” something for good. By the time 3rd grade comes around and kids are taught 3-digit additions, we have lost any shred of interest they may have had in previous years. In my state, we have “advanced academics classes, which only roll forward to math classes one year ahead. It would be so good for everyone to take the time to let children master one skill for as long as they need to, offering extensions in the same skill to the advanced students (word problems, complex applications, algebraic notations) instead of moving them forward to a different topic. I had to laugh when the “advanced math” consisted in working with 100,000s instead of 100s, using the same tired algorithms.Some children derive such a feeling that their knowledge is never good enough on any single topic in math, that they end up giving up math completely. I would propose that those very children are the smart kids who crave generalizations and more advanced work, and chafe at the short leash the curriculum holds them on. For these children, allowing them to explore the depths of each concept before moving on is key to how they learn. Returning to revisit a year later does not start to cut it.The list continues. It seems to me, as a parent, that elementary math is a collection of check-marks designed to elevate a district’s “bragging rights”, rather than to impart true depth to all children. I have little use for the single week of factors and multiples in 4th grade, because it did not take the time to show how to use them for fractions arithmetic, word problems, explore exponents, primes and divisibility. I *know* that by the time they come back to this concept in 5th grade, it will be learning it all over again! I would much rather wait, allowing everyone to become confident with a variety of situations requiring the 4 basic operations, before jumping in with fractions, factors and probabilities. Again, dividing the year into numeric and non-numeric only drives a “slide” far worse than what a summer vacation would do.So… that’s the root cause of my question: how can I try to influence the way early math is taught in schools? It may be a bit late for my own kids, but there is so much that we could do for others! My goal is to make sure not that all children are math whizzes by the time they reach middle school — rather, that they can rely on math to solve increasingly complex problems in a diversity of situations, including STEM areas, every day life, as well as easy transitions into the more advanced math taught in the higher grades. What I see today is math that prepares my children to be fine clerks or accountants, but leaving too much to be learned in the middle and high school, if they want a chance at that STEM career.