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.

Word problems try and tell students a story about the math problem in front of them. They are a useful way to connect abstract numbers to concrete situations, so students can learn early on to apply ...

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

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 ...

LAWRENCE — A new study from the University of Kansas explores the role of working memory in word problem-solving for students with and without math difficulties. Researchers found that using ...

Students get to share their favorite family recipes and practice their problem-solving strategies in this engaging math project.

Here's the thing about math that nobody tells you: it's less about memorizing formulas and more about knowing which tools to reach for. By fourteen, students should have a problem-solving toolkit that ...

Alan Veliz-Cuba has received funding from the Simons Foundation and the American Mathematical Society for some of his research. You can probably think of a time when you’ve used math to solve an ...