Strategies For Solving Math Word Problems

"Word problems show up in our curriculum every day, straight through from kindergarten to 12th grade," Orosco said. You want them to find the correct answer, but you also want them to learn to form problem-solving models. How much money did Esmeralda spend on a new pair of shoes?With this strategy, we're trying to make it simple for teachers. " Some students may not experience difficulty in computing the math to arrive at the correct answer.Students then collaborated in pairs to apply the strategies they learned, and finally they practiced independently to apply the approach to more word problems.

Math problems often require established procedures and knowing what procedure to apply.

To create procedures, you have to be familiar with the problem situation and be able to collect the appropriate information, identify a strategy or strategies, and use the strategy appropriately. When deciding on methods or procedures to use to solve problems, the first thing you will do is look for clues, which is one of the most important skills in solving problems in mathematics.

If you begin to solve problems by looking for clue words, you will find that those words often indicate an operation.

This, of course, means looking for clue words as outlined in the previous section.

The results show the value of focusing on comprehension with word problems, and the authors recommend teacher preparation courses train future teachers to use such approaches, especially with English learners.

"What makes this study important is it shares evidence-based practices that are working for children learning English and is having some good success in pushing the field forward," Orosco said.Comprehension strategy instruction addresses math, reading, writing, vocabulary and, perhaps most importantly, reading comprehension.Improvements in those areas lead not only to better test scores but also to students who are able to solve problems in other areas of life. S., we're just programmed to hate math, and we don't teach a lot of problem-solving," Orosco said.Word problems and the strategies the authors studied to teach them are vital for numerous reasons.Among them, many students and teachers alike have a "math phobia," and students often plateau in math achievement around fourth grade.For English learners, that can happen even earlier or lead to minority students being placed unnecessarily in special education, Orosco said.Such a plateau results in students not only scoring poorly in math but seeing roadblocks to well-paying careers in fields such as engineering and the sciences, among others.If you begin to solve problems by looking for clue words, you will find that these words often indicate an operation. The first thing to do when you encounter a math problem is to look for clue words.This is one of the most important skills you can develop.It's all about reading comprehension and vocabulary development." The study used comprehension strategy instruction that helped students understand factors of a math word problem beyond the numbers. However, English learners are likely to face the challenge of processing information contained in a word problem in the English language, such as understanding the meaning of the word "pair" and the verb "spend." They would need this background knowledge to deduce that the number of stores visited does not influence the answer.The authors include the following sample word problem: "Esmeralda was shopping at the mall. The study had teachers use a strategy in which the teacher first restated the question and helped students understand what it was about, then helped them determine what was relevant information versus irrelevant information, such as sentences that were needed and not needed to solve the problem.