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Welcome! This is me dipping my toe into the blogging pool (or more accurately, ocean.) I’m often asked for suggestions to teach problem-solving skills. To me, the key is to have a consistent set of steps that begin with comprehension. Students can’t solve a problem if they don’t understand what it’s about.

The Importance of Word Problems

Every time I present a computation problem for students, it’s a word problem. It’s unlikely that someone will be walking down the street and see 37 x 12, so teaching students through word problems is important to me. It allows them to practice their comprehension skills as they try to determine what is happening in the problem and what they need to find out.

Understanding the Problem

The first thing I ask students to do is read and retell. I started doing this after attending a training by Sue O’Connell.  Sue recommends having students retell the problem in their own words. This allows me to make sure students understand the problem before attempting to solve it. Consider this simple problem:

Jonah had some apples in a basket. There were 4 red apples and 5 green apples.

How many apples did Jonah have in his basket?

A retell for this problem might sound like this, “Jonah had some red apples and some green apples in a basket. I need to find out how many apples he had all together.”  

The next step is for students to write an answer statement. For the apple problem, it might look like this, “Jonah had _______ apples in all.” This step helps students focus on what they are trying to find. It also provides a unit for their answer.

Making a Plan

Now, students are ready to make a plan. This includes determining what information is necessary to find the solution and deciding which operation to use and why. Finally, before solving, students should estimate an answer. Estimating answers is an important step that often gets skipped. Computational estimation allows students to check the reasonableness of the their answers and assess whether their work makes sense as they go.

Solving and Assessing Reasonableness

Students then use the information they have to solve the problem, using pictures, numbers, or words. I encourage them to show their work with enough detail that anyone would know how they solved the problem.

In the final step, students need to make sure they’ve answered the question and that their answer is reasonable.

In order for students to practice the problem-solving steps, they answer journal prompts each week during guided math rotations. I created a checklist that was glued onto the inside front cover to serve as a reminder. After writing the date on their journal page, students glue a journal prompt on the page. Then, as they work to solve the prompt, they follow the steps we’ve learned for problem-solving.                  

Get the journal page here, free!