This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news outlet focused on education. The Hechinger Report is a national nonprofit newsroom that reports on one topic: education.

Students often struggle to connect math with the real world. Word problems—a combination of words, numbers, and mathematical operations—can be a perfect vehicle to take abstract numbers off the page.

Word problems are often described as “math stories” and can put complex mathematical operations into a more approachable form for students. But students often struggle when they see a combination of ...

Children often use these “schemes of action” to solve math word problems. Therefore, Combine problems (e.g., “John has four pencils and Steven has three. How many do they have altogether?”) are easy ...

Segue Institute for Learning teacher Cassandra Santiago introduces a lesson on word problems to her first graders one spring afternoon. Credit: Phillip Keith for The Hechinger Report The Hechinger ...

Education professors have shown that a comprehension-based strategy can help English learners improve their math word-problem solving abilities. The approach boosts reading comprehension and problem ...

Solving word problems is a key component of math curriculum in primary schools. One must have acquired basic language skills to make sense of word problems. So why do children still find certain word ...

Solve word problems using a checklist. Engage in a Number Talk to find "how many." Solve addition and subtraction word problems with a Step-by-Step Visual Model checklist. Understand what the problem ...