Grades 3-5 Math Problem Solving in Action_ Getting Students to Love Word Problems

Reasoning About Problems ◆ 93

Figure 6.6 Bean Salad Problems

Step 4: Draw the rectangle with just the numbers and labels.

White beans

Butter Beans

Brown Beans

6

3

1

Figure 6.7 Bean Salad Problems

Coin Puzzle Problems

There are also Coin Puzzle problems
(Lawrence Hall of Science) that elicit
the same type of reasoning, but with
using coins as a pretext rather than
beans (see Figure 6.8). Students should
be encouraged to use physical models
as well as drawing, diagrams and tables
to work through the possibilities.

Word Problem Sort

In this workstation, the students sort the word problems by category (see
Figure 6.9). This station helps students to reason about the type of problem
they are solving. It is important that students understand and can explain the
situation. Although they might use an inverse operation or another strategy
to solve the problem, they need to understand the problem situation. For
example, I might use repeated addition to solve a multiplication problem, but
that doesn’t change the problem type. The strategy to solve the problem might
have been repeated addition, but the problem is a multiplication one.

Figure 6.8 Coin Puzzle Problems

Mike has 37 cents. He has 11

coins. What are they?

1. Draw a picture
   2. Write an equation
   3. Answer