"Cubing" a word problem - When students see a word problem, the best chance for success is to pull out the important information. By doing this, we use CUBES!

C - circle any numbers that will be useful in solving the problem

U - underline the question that is being asked to solve.

B - box out any important words (words that compliment the numbers and anything else like "altogether, in all, total, etc.)

E - evaluate what needs to be done. Which operation(s) will need to be used?

S - solve (show a model in our POW's)