Identifying the Why

Misconception #4

Have you ever given students a worksheet, only to notice they completed all of the computation problems at the top but skipped the word problems at the bottom?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIgvboAjznQ

https://youtu.be/cIgvboAjznQ

It is a pattern many teachers have observed. Students work through the calculations with confidence, but when they reach a word problem, they hesitate, leave it blank, or move on entirely. At first glance, it can be easy to assume that the word problems are simply too difficult.

Too often, this pattern is interpreted as a lack of mathematical ability when, in reality, many students are struggling with something different: they do not know how to approach the problem. When students repeatedly experience failure with word problems, avoidance can become a learned response.

Skipping the problem is often not about laziness. It is about uncertainty. Computation is a mathematical skill. Problem solving is also a skill, and like any skill, it must be explicitly taught, modeled, practiced, and supported over time.

Students may know how to add, subtract, multiply, or divide. What they often struggle with is determining which operation to use, identifying the important information, and deciding where to begin. Without a process for making sense of the problem, even students with strong computation skills can become overwhelmed.

Perhaps the issue is not that students cannot solve word problems. Perhaps the issue is that many students were never given a strategy that helped them make sense of the problem in the first place.

Before we ask students to solve a problem, we must first teach them how to approach one.

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