Word Problems

This week Mrs. Lemons taught her students word problems. Now I can not stand word problems! I never understood them in school. I feel like a lot of students just think too much into them. Mrs. Lemons feels the same exact way about them also! She usually does not spend a lot of time with her students on word problems because she doesn't enjoy teaching them. But to make them more fun, she created a word problem packet. She is selling this packet on the website  teacherspayteachers.com. So what Mrs. Lemons does with her word problem packet is that she prints them out for her students and then they pick which one they would like to solve, cut it out, and glue it into their notebook. Mrs. Lemons also prints out worksheets with clue words on them to help her students understand what "key" words they should be looking for in word problems to tell the difference between an addition problem and a subtraction problem. For example, on the addition worksheet she has the words...together, in all, total, increase, altogether, both, sum, plus, combine, add, and join. On the subtraction worksheet she has the words...fewer than, less than, left, remain, minus, take away, how many more, how much more, difference, and decrease. She also has worksheets with reminders on them for her students. For example a worksheet explaining to them to read carefully and what the question is asking them. Also, a reminder to show all work in their notebooks, using either pictures or numbers.
An example of a word problem Mrs. Lemons made up was, "Jackie has twice as many crayons as Henry. Henry has 7 crayons in his box. How many crayons does Jackie have?" So first the student cut out the word problem and glued it into their notebook. Next the student highlighted the words twice, 7 crayons, and how many crayons since that is what the word problem is asking. After the student figured out the word problem was addition, they wrote underneath the word problem in their notebook Henry's name and Jackie's name. Next to Henry's name they drew 7 vertical lines. Then next to Jackie's name the student added 7 more lines than next to Henry's name. So altogether Henry should have 14 vertical lines. Next, the student added 7+7 to receive an answer of Jackie having 14 crayons.
Mrs. Lemons explained how doing this helped her students understand the material better and also kept her motivated to teach word problems. By doing what she did it keeps the lesson interesting and also the students get to draw while they are also doing work. The feedback on Mrs. Lemons blog under this activity from other teachers was all positive and everyone really seemed to enjoy teaching word problems to their students this way.