Word problems have been around for a very long time. Consider these two specific examples:
You probably found the second problem more difficult to understand because the context is less familiar. Many students find difficulties with this.
Difficulties with word problems arise because:
This can also mean that the students cannot imagine the context of the word problem (Nunes, 1993). Word problems are often essentially mathematical problems dressed up in everyday language. They can help students understand that mathematics can model the real world and they themselves become mathematicians when they do this. This is why students need to realise that the power of mathematics in real-world problems lies in its ability to model complex situations, from which they must extract the essential elements in order to solve these problems.
Focusing on the process of making sense of a complex situation and modelling it mathematically can also help students focus on making sense of word problems. Activity 3 looks at how to help students find out what they need to know more independently by rephrasing the word problems.
Adapt these word problems so that they fit the level of learning of your own students.
The activity
Tell your students to read each problem and answer the following questions:
For each problem, consider:
Your students will probably not all be at the same stage in their ability to make sense of the context and the mathematics in a word problem. This activity should provide you with an excellent opportunity to monitor their performance and provide them with constructive feedback. You may wish to have a look at Resource 2, ‘Monitoring and giving feedback’, to help you prepare for this aspect of the activity.
![]() Video: Monitoring and giving feedback |
I am pleased that I used these three problems with my class. I have to say it was hard work getting them to focus at the start – they just seemed to find problems and say that they were stuck. However, I persevered. I told them to work in pairs, which I always think is helpful if the work is unfamiliar and likely to require a lot of thinking. I reminded them to note down anything that they did not know the meaning of and then think about how they could find out about these ideas.
After everyone had done some thinking, we shared what we could use to find out about the ideas. They first said, ‘Ask the teacher’, but I banned that for this exercise and asked them to be more imaginative. One said, ‘Use the internet’, another ‘Look it up in the textbook’, so I suggested that they look up what they could in their textbooks and that if they brought me a note of anything they couldn’t find, I would be their internet search engine for today! I made sure to be awkward and only give information on what was actually ‘entered in the search bar’ in order to make them think about what they really needed to know.
Once everyone felt they had the information they needed, they went onto the rephrasing exercise. It seemed that this was easy now because the class were working collaboratively and learning together by this time.
What I had not expected was that the students in my classroom who were multilingual really benefitted from the discussions of what the words meant. I told them to make sure to make a note of the meaning of the words in whatever language they are most comfortable with so they could refer to it later.
![]() Pause for thought
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