Word problems.

Not my favorite. My kids really really struggled with them this year. This was totally our Herculean task. They kept looking for keywords (ugh) and I kept telling them over and over you can't rely on them. I told them that the people who write the questions and answers are trying to trick them and they had to think about it and try and figure out what they needed to do by imagining the story in their head.

It worked sometimes. Mostly not.

In an attempt to not let this become my white whale, I've been reading Children's Mathematics:Cognitively Guided Instruction in my free time. I'm lucky our Math Coach loaned hers out to me, so I have all her notes to look at as I read. She's a really smart lady.

I created a little interactive notebook template to sort the addition and subtraction problem types.

click on the picture to download!