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Febraury 20, 2018
Helping Students Solve Word Problems

Teachers often tell us that students have difficulty solving word problems and frequently just grab numbers and operate with them with no regard to the problem context. One strategy that OGAP teachers have used to help their students overcome anxiety about solving word problems draws from literacy strategies.  Teachers have reported that after students have done this multiple times they become more confident in their ability to solve word problems. 

The approach consists of the following steps:
  1. Present a problem situation without the question included.
  2. Read the problem with the students. Have students retell and make sense of the situation to each other and then as a class.
  3. Ask students to generate several questions that could be answered with the information in the problem. Collect those questions on chart paper.
  4. Present the "real question" and have students solve it.
  5. Debrief solutions to the real problem.
  6. After discussion of their solutions, assign students to solve different problems from the student generated list of questions. 
Remember, teaching students to find "key words" can be counterproductive and harmful because it leads students to focus on the presence of specific words outside of their context rather than making sense of the situation. Words like "more" and "altogether" can take on very different meanings in word problems.
Action Item

If you haven't already done so, try taking a problem from your textbook or the OGAP item bank and presenting it to students without the question. Follow the steps above to engage students with the problem situation and generate a class list of questions. Does this strategy help your students engage in problem solving differently? What other benefits do you see? What other ideas do you have for using this strategy?

For more information and examples on this strategy, see the PowerPoints from OGAP training linked below.



Did you know?

You can access the OGAP Item Banks online in two ways: find our new searchable OGAP item bank  here ( bookmark it! ) or view the PDFs at  www.ogapmath.com/item-bank .

Also, you can access past issues of OGAP Teacher Tips by visiting  www.ogapmath.com/ogap-teacher-tips-archive.