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just change the arrows into equal signs and it looks pretty clear, though i'm not sure if a first-grade child is more familiar with that notation. anyway this homework is part of a larger lesson in which almost identical exercises were solved ad nauseam. unclear textbooks isn't really one of the problems with education at any level. also: flagged.

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I think the grids are throwing people off.

This is what the child is supposed to do: Grid (Draw in counters for second number, then count total of both grids) -> Fill in both bottom blanks with counted total -> Ten plus what equals bottom blank?

This is what we're doing: Add numbers -> Why the hell is there only one grid? -> Then we post our child's homework onto the internet

Agreed. The visual placement of the grid is a large part of the problem. You'd be able to discern the flow (and logic) of the assignment far better if the grid were placed in between the two sums, for example.

The problem is that there are two bottom boxes and both of them are empty. So it looks like they're asking 8+3=11, 10+?=?.

They should've formatted it like 8+3=11=10+? Then it'd be clear we have 11=10+?, 1 equ. & 1 unknown, BAM! solved.

Why even equals signs -- the arrow can just be read as "transform the lhs problem into the simpler rhs problem".

maybe if either side was complete.

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