Watch the video or read the transcript below:

Here are links to products/activities mentioned in this vlog. (Some may be affiliate links which just means that if you do purchase using my link, the company you purchased from sends me some money. Find more info HERE about that.)

• Join the Build Math Minds PD site to access Ann Elise’s Addition & Subtraction Word Problems Mini-Course
• Cognitively Guided Instruction

Because our upper kids really struggle with this stuff. They still see story problems, it’s just with decimals and fractions. And, so, now we have all these different layers. They’re not good at story problems, to begin with, and then they’re struggling with decimals and fractions, and it just becomes really overwhelming to them.

She’s going to be talking about that mini course she’s doing, but I want you to think about what she’s talking about in this video and how you can apply it in your class, whether or not you take the mini-course with her or not. I’m going to let her chat about those things, and then I’m going to come back on and kind of give you my takeaways of what we should be doing in the classroom. Because, even though she’s talking about what she’s gonna be doing in the mini-course, these are the things that we should be doing in our classroom to help our kids with addition and subtraction word problems.

Here is Ann Elise

Now, I know that it sounds like it should be easy, addition and subtraction word problems, how hard could that be? But, let me tell you, there is a lot of complication to it. In particular, to help be able to build our own math minds so that we can then build math minds of our students, for sure.

When I taught fifth grade, in an elementary classroom, for thirteen years, I would give assignments to my students and I knew that when students that get out of their seat to come to talk to me and they say I don’t get it, I knew it was the first word problem on the page. I know I was able to teach them the procedures and the skills, and then they would get to the one that actually had the application problem or it was a word problem, and they just had zero perseverance, didn’t even know where to begin.

And, then, I would try to help them, and I do remember I gave them highlighters, they highlighted the numbers, and they highlighted the keywords, and I had a gorgeous keyword poster up on my wall, and I thought that, and the students thought that, the kids were doing fine, once they could take out those numbers, pluckers, as Graham Fletcher calls them, and then look at the keyword poster to see what operation they should do, and then they calculate their answer. Now, I was successful in that, in that because the questions that I gave them all had the results unknown, so the keywords worked.

But, now that we know so much more about how kids learn, as they learn and grow, particularly about word problems, and based on the research of Thomas Carpenter and his colleagues, called Cognitively Guided Instruction, there are actually lots of different problem types that involve addition and subtraction. And, we can’t just keep teaching keywords anymore, because the unknowns could be at any spot.

Looking for the word more does not necessarily mean that I’m going to add the numbers together. So, not only did I do a disservice to my students by not letting them become persevering in problem-solving and really doing the work of mathematicians, I was trying to help, and I loved them, and I wanted to support them and have them be successful, but I realize now, I cringe at the thought, because I know I did nothing to help them become problem solvers, and critical thinkers, and whatnot.

I designed this course so that we can explore the word problems types together. Now, as I present seminars, I do ask my participants how many problem types do they think that there are that involve just adding and subtracting. And, I get numbers ranging from a two to four, sometimes six, but I rarely hear many people offer the 15 that there actually are. And, when you add in multiple-step problems, or two-step and then multi-step problems that we want by the end of grade two, there are 20.

Understanding the Structure of Word Problems

If we don’t know what these problem types are, how on Earth are we going to be able to teach them to our students and prepare them for the foundation that we really expect that are in our standards? I want to make sure that we’re covering in the course all the different varieties of problem types that there are. And, then, once we know about the different problem types, I then want to talk about the modeling of them. The modeling of them helps the structure of the word problem become, in a visual way, very clear in our minds.

Now, I’ve lived this myself. I know that I have read, particularly comparison, problem types, and my mind would get confused. Like, am I trying to look for the larger number, the small, do I add, do I subtract? But, now that I’m working with these models, and, particularly, I love the tape diagram model, when I work with these, I now visually see the structure of the word problem and it becomes, really, much easier for my brain to figure out what I need to do.

And, these structures, the beauty of it is the structures remain the same throughout the years of the grade levels of the kids. What changes is the calculation of the multi-digit numbers or the fractions and decimals down the road? But, very often, I’ll be reading a word problem given to students, say, in grade five, and it’s a comparison problem type, only it has fractions in them, but it’s still a comparison problem type. If we were able to build the foundation of the word problem structures for our kiddos K-2, they’re set up for success in their future math journeys. It really can become a really powerful way for us to teach the kids problem-solving in a way that goes to the underlying structure of the problem, so students aren’t just going to read a problem and then give up and say, oh, I don’t get it because it has words. They really can understand what’s going on in the word problems, and understand, and then have that flexibility of how they want to calculate the answer. So, let’s take, for an example, a word problem like a takeaway problem.

If I have 15 cupcakes and I gave away eight of them to my friends, how many would I have left? Well, now, that’s a takeaway thought process, so it does encourage me and, as students begin learning about the problem types, that take-away method, it encourages to think about taking away from the 15.

I have my 15, I’m taking away eight from that, how much is left? But, I can also think about that as a missing add-in problem, so I can think, well, something plus eight must make the 15.

And, I can even start at the eight and count up to the 15, if I want to. Even though the problem type is a takeaway problem type, I could use addition to solve it.

Modeling Problems Concretely, Pictorially, And Abstractly

I mean, all of these mathematical things are embedded within this work. I love also focusing on the meaning of equality, that it means the same as, that both sides of an equation need to be balanced, that they are gonna be balancing, you know if you have one of those plastic balances. It’s so much mathematics is embedded within this, and so much sophistication to it, and it takes time to learn that journey.

Our hope is that, by the end of grade two, students would have these addition and subtraction word problem types mastered so that we can go on to multiplication and division ones in grade three, four, five.

But, the problem types are not going to go away, they’re going to have decimals, and fractions, and multi-digit numbers.

It’s really important we’re creating that foundation of knowledge for our students. So, in the mini-course, we’ll be talking about all the varieties of problem types that there are. There are four basic types, but then, of course, it gets more complicated when we have the unknown being at each spot. Let’s talk about what happens when those are happening and how we can visualize these using models.

What kind of materials can we use concretely, and in pictorially, and then, finally, abstractly using equations to be able to model the structure of what’s going on in the word problems, and then we’ll talk about the equations and the mathematics that can be done to compute the answer.

Now, again, math isn’t all just about getting the right answers. But, of course, we do want to be able to successfully come to a right answer. Let’s talk about what kind of possibilities there are for equations because those are the choices that our students have to come to an answer that makes sense to them and see whether it’s reasonable.

Assessing To See How Students Are Doing With Word Problems To Inform Our Instruction

I’ll be providing you with an assessment that you can give to see where the strengths are of your students. We can be able to build on that and develop a plan to meet the needs of all your students. I’ll also include a data file that you’ll be able to organize your data to really see exactly where the needs are, both as an entire classroom but also how you can zoom in in small group time to work with the kids. There is a lot that is involved within these addition and subtraction word problem types.

I certainly hope that you will join me and, particularly, to build your own math mind so that you feel comfortable with it, so that we can then turn around and be able to help our students and create that foundation of learning so they’re not afraid to work on any word problems and, in fact, they’ll be proud to get out of their seats and show you how they figured it out, as opposed to saying I don’t know how to get, I don’t get this, I don’t know. So, please join me. I look forward to seeing you. And, take care!

[CHRISTINA]

I thank you so much, Ann Elise. I just, I love learning with Ann Elise. But, here’s my big takeaways from what she talked about, what she’s gonna be doing in the course. So, if you’re not going to take the course, here’s the things that I picked up that we need to be doing around word problems with our kids.

#1: We have to, as the teacher, understand the different story problem types.

It’s not very necessary that kids can name these story problem types, but, as teachers, we better know what types are out there so that we know whether or not kids are able to solve those. Are our textbooks actually including all of these different story problem types, because our assessments actually are?

So, you need to be able to analyze your textbook to show are they only ever showing the result unknown story problem types, or are they exposing kids to all the other types. You need to know what those problem types are, and then you can look for those things in your classroom.

#2: Allowing kids to model these story problems is crucial.

It is not just giving a story problem and having kids write the equation that goes with it. Kids need to really understand and be able to model the problem with manipulatives and draw pictures. Well, and, actually, don’t have them draw pictures, ’cause, if they’re in first grade and kindergarten, they will draw elaborate pictures. I talk about it as drawing models of the problem.

So, kids need that, or else they become number pluckers, as Graham Fletcher calls them. We don’t want kids just plucking out the numbers and trying to write the equation to solve. They need to model and truly understand what the story problem is asking them. Now, the big piece of that is being able to connect those models to the equations. So, yes, we do want kids to connect an equation to it, but you’re not just jumping straight to that.

#3: Being able to assess to see how the kids are doing on story problems.

You will see kids who can do bare problems and they can’t do a story problem. That was me when I was growing up. Give me 30 to 50 problems, because that’s the way textbooks work, I could solve every single one of those problems, and then I would skip the story problems. But, it’s not that I didn’t understand the mathematics, I could do the math, I could do the arithmetic, let me be careful on that, I could do the arithmetic, but I really wasn’t understanding how mathematics applied to my real life. And, that’s what story problems are about.

So, it’s really digging into are kids able to apply this in real life settings. Those are the big takeaways I hope you got from Ann Elise’s video here.

If you want help with those big ideas, come join Ann Elise in her mini course. If not, then do those on your own. I don’t care if you take Ann Elise’s course or not, but I want you guys to be able to do those things. And, if you want help with that, come join Ann Elise in the course.

Alright, so I hope that that video helped you build your math mind so you can go build the math minds of your students.

Pin This To Pinterest for Later