Mathematics: Wonderful Word Problems

When you think of maths, numbers automatically come to mind, but what about words? Word problems are common questions in Mathematics and some believe that if you are fluent in English, word problems would be a piece of cake. However, many students lose marks during their tests because they couldn’t interpret these word problems correctly. The gap isn’t in knowing how to speak English, it’s from how students select and extract relevant details and discarding the rest. But, what information is relevant?

In this two-hour workshop, students will learn how to determine what type of action word is presented in a word problem, how to extract the important details, and what to do if there are more than one action word there. Students will deepen their understanding by acting out several problems, and even learning to create their own word problem based on an equation to fully develop their knowledge.

There will be two age groups: year 2 – 3 will focus on one-step problems, whereas year 4 – 5 will focus on multi-step problems with more than one action word present. Students of all backgrounds can enjoy the benefits of this workshop, in particular those studying the British curriculum which focuses heavily on word problems. Students participating are expected to be able to read and write without assistance and be familiar with addition, subtraction multiplication and division.

Agenda

• Brainstorming action words
• Acting out word problems to extract relevant information
• Transforming word problems into equations
• Creating word problems from an equation