Objective
Learn why understanding and teaching with problem types helps students organize their thinking.
What You’ll Learn
Teaching word problems by problem type is all about helping students understand the context of the problem and match that context with a mathematical relationship of numbers.
Word problems are often aptly referred to as story problems. There is a story to be understood. In fact, students learn better when math is applied in real-world contexts that they can relate to their own experiences.
How have you taught students to solve word problems in the past? What has worked? What hasn’t worked?
Download Activities & Notes
Dawn Moore says
I am an interventionist for 3rd grade. I have been trying to find ways to help my students “see” what is actually happening in the story or word problem. I have my students use cubes to model the problem. I have created hand signs that we do for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. I usually have a strip diagram/bar model with a number line to show what is actually happening. ‘I notice my students struggle with understanding if it is equal groups or not equal groups. I learned about “start/change/result” quite a few years ago but never implemented. I am excited to learn/try something new that will help my students.
Sandra Eslick says
We have done a lot of drawing, modeling with number lines. We talk about the story problem and look at key words. Sometimes they are successful and sometimes they are not.
Julie Pye says
Have have tried underlining keywords and using that information to create a number sentence to solve problem. This has helped some students. I have tried crossing out information in the word problem and then using key words to create a number sentence which has helped some students. The language is difficult for esl students so I have created anchor charts with mathematical language to assist with mild success. Looking for another way
Sarah Cedar says
In the past I have used a maths problem template where students highlight key words to work out which mathematical operations can be used and the working out is displayed as a picture sentence and a number sentence.
Erin Grisham says
We have used part part whole mats, number bonds, number lines, looked at key words, known/unknown elements, and even boxed important information and underlined the questions to express learning through modeling. Some of this works for students and some of it doesn’t.