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.

This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news outlet focused on education. The Hechinger Report is a national nonprofit newsroom that reports on one topic: education.

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 ...

A member of our research community, Terhi Vessonen and her co-authors, looked into how different characteristics of mathematical word problem-solving tasks may influence elementary schooler’s ...

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 ...

In a recent study from our research group, we looked into how different characteristics of mathematical word problem-solving tasks may influence elementary schooler’s performance. Mathematical word ...

Microsoft Math Solver is a free tool that uses AI to recognize both printed and handwritten math. It’s particularly strong with geometric proofs and interactive graphing, and it pulls learning ...

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 ...