Solving Word Problems 2

Students Making Their Own Word Problems

Another way to understand word problems is to encourage students to construct simple word problems of their own.

Teachers in Indian schools always give problems which are already printed in the textbook. Students start believing that that is the only way to get word problems for solving. They do not believe that they or the teachers can write math word problems of their own.

It would be a tremendous confidence boost for children that they are trained to construct math word problems. Telling their own problems also improves their language fluency and comprehension.

Teachers can tell a simple word problem to students and encourage them to make slight modifications in the problem – changing the situations, language or numbers. For example, assume that the teacher says “Ram had 5 pencils. Abdul has 4 pencils. How many pencils do they have together?” A student could change to toffees instead of pencils. Another could change the language into “what is the total number of pencils they have?”. Another could change the numbers.

As children gain experience, the teacher can lay down some restrictions. One could be that if a student has spoken a problem related to pencils, then other children have to use some other items! Similarly, there could be a restriction that the same numbers cannot be repeated.

The teacher can also state a particular metaphor and then ask students to make suitable word problems.

Oral & Not Written

All these activities must be done orally, so that in a 40-minute period, each and every child gets a chance to tell a math story. This in turn means that a child is listening to 30 or 40 different math stories. The learning experience is enormous!

Student Math Worksheets

After sufficient experience in making word problems, children can be asked to write them down. A teacher can even prepare a worksheet made of student-written problems and give it as homework. Imagine the boost to the morale of the children!

Problem Solving is Heuristic

Ultimately, solving word problems, which is a subset of “problem solving” is a heuristic and not an algorithmic process. Hence all the steps & strategies should be seen only as guidelines. The only way to master the art of solving word problems is to solve & construct as many as you can. At the same time there should be a continuous effort to understand the structure of the problem and connect it with the logic of the solution process followed.