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.

Organizational strategies that help students break complex word problems into manageable chunks may be the key to solving them, according to a 2025 study.

Want to learn more? Sign up for a free five-week email mini-course full of research-backed strategies to help students make sense of math. Give Cindy Cliche a math word problem, and she can tell you ...

Este artículo está disponible en español. Léelo en español. When Nicole Thompson teaches a math word problem to her fourth grade class in Pajaro Valley Unified, she has the class read it over three ...

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 ...