After your kids have grasped the essence of numbers, they’ll usually be presented with word problems to evaluate how well they have understood the lessons. Most kids would find it a challenge at first. They not only have to deal with numbers. Rather, they have to combine everything they know. Their knowledge in reading and comprehension will be tested. They will have to make use of their analytical and cognitive skills. To top it off, they have to ensure that they have acquired a thorough understanding of the numbers of different math applications.
But the good news is, they need not feel burdened. We have narrowed down a list to 4 useful steps that you can train your kids to use in order to aid them in their word problems.
4 Steps in Math Word Problems
1. Understand the problem.
This is the most important part. Kids have to grasp what the math problem is pertaining to. You can help your kids by stating the problem in a different way. Use various objects that he or she is familiar with. They will be able to get a better understanding when they can relate to the topic. A common tendency is for your kid to get lost in sea of too many words. You can try breaking the problem into simpler parts. Once they understood the first part of the problem, they can move to the next part. This way, they’ll know what the problem as a whole is pertaining to.
2. Choose the most effective approach for you.
What’s the approach they respond to the best? You can try the various methods in heuristics math. Is it the visual representation, the calculated guess, going through the process or the restatement of the problem? Though that last bit is most suitable in the first step of understanding the problem. The approach is chosen based on the preferred choice of the kid and the requirement of the problem.
3. Solve the problem.
After you’ve chosen the approach, go on in trying it out with the problem. See if it’s suitable and how well your kid uses it. But your kid has to know the approach fully to be able to make use of it. You can check the detailed description of each approach in our previous posts.
4. Go over your solution.
Did he get it right? Are there any redundant steps? What is needed to be done to avoid these redundancies? Is it the approach? Can he use a different approach? Would it be better?
These are only some of the questions that you have to think of to improve the learning capacity of your child and ensure that he will understand what to do in the succeeding word problems
An Example
Question: There are only tomatoes and mangoes in the basket. There are 50 items in total and 15 are tomatoes. How many mangoes are there?
Understand the problem. Break down the problem into simpler parts. What types of items are in the basket? Tomatoes and mangoes. How many tomatoes were there? 15. How many items are there in total? 50. What are you looking for? The number of mangoes.
Choose the most effective approach for you. Here, you can use going through the process. Get 50 sticks with 15 red colored sticks. Then, count how many non-red colored sticks are there.
Solve the problem. Do the math. Just count and you can come up with 35 or just subtract 15 from 50.
Go over your solution. Is it the best solution to go about the problem? In this case, it is.