Taking the problem out of word problems...

As a teacher when I write my lesson plan for word problems I quiver at the thought of the frightened faces in my class.  Somewhere along the way word problems become a problem for students.  Oddly enough on my quizzes and tests most of my students can answer the word problems better than the multi-step equations.  Yet if you ask any of them about a word problem, they begin to almost hyperventilate.

Today's lesson will be to try and take the fear away by providing the students with a word problem toolkit.  I wanted to make sure the students didn't fear word problems and could find the key words to solving multi-step equation word problems.

First, we underline what the equation is looking for.  Next, we highlight the important information and mark out the unnecessary.  Third, we identify the indicators for operations and for the equal sign.  Finally, set up and solve.

The kids seemed to do a great job with the assignment and had a grasp of multi-step equations better than they did previously.  They still were tripped up by consecutive numbers, but until they see the answer they can't grasp why we are adding something to x.  Also, as always we had a discussion of when you need to go a step beyond solving for the variable.