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.

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.

In Central Falls, R.I., teachers are trying new strategies that move away from focusing on “key words,” the traditional, simplistic approach that often leads younger students astray CENTRAL FALLS, R.I ...

Education professors have shown that a comprehension-based strategy can help English learners improve their math word-problem solving abilities. The approach boosts reading comprehension and problem ...

Working memory is like a mental chalkboard we use to store temporary information while executing other tasks. Scientists worked with more than 200 elementary students to test their working memory, ...

Word problems are often described as “math stories” and can put complex mathematical operations into a more approachable form for students. But students often struggle when they see a combination of ...

Solving word problems is a key component of math curriculum in primary schools. One must have acquired basic language skills to make sense of word problems. So why do children still find certain word ...

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 ...