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Students often struggle to connect math with the real world. Word problems—a combination of words, numbers, and mathematical operations—can be a perfect vehicle to take abstract numbers off the page.

Solving word problems is a key component of math curriculum in primary schools. One must have acquired basic language skills to make sense of word problems. So why do children still find certain word ...

Segue Institute for Learning teacher Cassandra Santiago introduces a lesson on word problems to her first graders one spring afternoon. Credit: Phillip Keith for The Hechinger Report The Hechinger ...

Key points Word problems that can be solved by the same arithmetic operation have varying difficulty. Problems that involve the inverse relation between addition and subtraction are more challenging.