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How To Solve Math Word Problems? 12 Strategies

Math word problems are everywhere, from the classroom to the outside world. At the same time, they are not always straightforward. In fact, they can get quite tricky sometimes. This article looks into math word problem strategies your child can use to understand the problems at hand and translate them into the language of numbers and variables to find the solution.

Key points:

• Math word problems are an important part of any mathematical curriculum, but your kid will also encounter them often in daily life
• While sometimes tricky, there are many math word problem strategies your child can use to solve these tasks effectively
• From breaking the problem down, translating the words into math symbols, and finding keywords in the problem, your child can learn to turn word problems into solvable math equations

What Is The Best Way To Solve Word Problems?

The best way to solve word problems is to make sure that children understand the gist of the problem. This one is pretty self-explanatory: if they don’t understand the requirement of the problem, they cannot effectively and correctly tackle it. So, it’s essential for you to help them understand the question.

Overall, if we were to list a single best way how to solve word problems, it would be the systematic breakdown of the problems. Rather than tackling the entire problem at once, children need to address it bit by bit. This method is a bit of an umbrella term, as it combines different steps and skills. We’ll look at them below, where you’ll find 12 effective strategies your child can use when dealing with math word problems.

How To Solve Word Problems Step By Step? Key Strategies

• Leverage math tutoring platforms
• Practice with word problem worksheets
• Find the key information
• Paraphrase the problem
• Translate words into symbols
• Use visuals 
• Break down the problem
• Employ estimations 
• Turn similar problems into templates
• Use logical reasoning for variables
• Check answers to your problem
• Draw lessons from mistakes

Seek Word Problem Help From Tutors

Tailored help from a tutor works ideally when your child needs clarification and context. Platforms like Brighterly focus on personalization, meaning that a skilled tutor works closely with your kid to understand their needs and requirements when practicing math word tasks.

How Can Brighterly Help Your Child Solve Word Problems?

If you are looking for help from professionals, the Brighterly math tutoring platform may be the perfect choice. There, your child can access 1-on-1 private lessons with highly vetted and experienced teachers, as well as math problem assistance and guided practice.

At first, students take a free diagnostic assessment to understand their strengths and knowledge gaps. Through this test, Brighterly will match you with the best tutor. The teachers then personalize the classes and address your kid’s specific pain points, while also creating a warm and friendly learning environment. The classes are engaging, interactive, and fun, and children get a lot of practice in solving exercises.

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Let Brighterly’s experienced tutors help your child with math word problems.

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Try Math Worksheets

Worksheets prove to be effective for math word problems as they provide in-depth practice in a convenient, printable format once your child is well acquainted with the theory.

If you wish to give your child extra math practice, Brighterly math worksheets can come in handy. Check some of them out:

• Percent word problems worksheets
• Addition word problems worksheets

Practical Tips

• Use colorful markers to highlight important points and boost visual memorization.
• Create a story around worksheet tasks to help your kids’ progress.
• The best help you can provide in solving math word problems is to collaborate closely with your kid, showing your engagement and anticipation of their progress.

Benefits

• Better critical thinking, along with analytical thinking and decision-making skills.
• Ability to work with diverse task types.

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Brighterly teachers help kids decode math problems through interactive 1-on-1 tutoring.

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Find Keywords To Help Solve Word Problems

Sometimes, kids get overwhelmed by the variety of details in a specific word problem. That’s why they must learn to identify the key points and work with them. Ask your child if they:

• Understand all the variables
• Understand the question they have to solve
• Understand the operations (addition, division, subtraction, multiplication) that they are about to employ

Practical Tips

• Teach the child to break the problem into smaller, manageable chunks. When ready, ask them to focus on a single piece at a time.
• Before transitioning to math word problem solving, help them verify which operation to use for specific examples.
• Try to relate the problem to real-world situations to provide the gist.

Benefits

• Better focus and attention levels result from the ability to search and find the key information points.
• Ability to connect math problems to real-world context.

Paraphrase The Problem

Paraphrasing is the core skill that will teach your kid how to understand math word problems. For the practice, you just need to ask them to rephrase the problem in their own words.

This way, they get manageable, understandable chunks of text that contain simple instructions with clear outcomes.

Practical Tips

• Encourage active reading with kids in any grade. Ask them to read the text aloud, then pause at each sentence and rephrase what they’ve just read.
• If a problem includes complex terms or concepts, simplify them for your kid or encourage them to look up the basic meaning in the dictionary.
• For an artistic edge, encourage your child to draw a diagram or picture to illustrate the problem.

Benefits

• Kids manage to better retain the information they’ve learned.
• They learn to focus on key data and ignore overwording.

Translate Words Into Symbols

This one stands out among other strategies to solve the word problem in math word problems as it teaches kids to read between the lines when interpreting their test task. Thus, for some problems, kids should be able to transform words into symbols. It means they learn to identify specific target keywords and understand the connection between them and the symbol intended.

For example, in the word problem “Tom has 12 apples. He buys 5 more apples from the store. How many apples does he have now?,” these are the symbols to identify:

• “has” means the starting amount (+12 apples).
• “buys” means addition (+5 apples).
• “How many” means the total or the unknown we need to find.

Practical Tips

• Ask your kid to focus on keywords for solutions. These include (but aren’t limited to): “has,” “buys,” “gives,” or “shares.”
• Start with simple problems and increase their complexity as your child gains confidence.
• Practice math word problems with versatile tasks.

Benefits

• Improved math understanding.
• Boosted analytical skills by focusing on specific clues.

Use Diagrams Or Visual Models

Drawing pictures or diagrams can be the most creative way to answer the question, “How to solve word problems in math?” The approach is beneficial for teaching spatial relations or quantity. There’s no need to draw complex pictures, as even simple bars or geometrical shapes will do perfectly.

Practical Tips

• If working with unified visuals seems too complex for your child, ask them to draw separate picture cards for each step of a problem. They’ll be happy to include some creativity!
• Ask the child to use different colors for better representation.
• Drawing lines is a good solution for problems with addition and subtraction. Just ask your kid to draw a line in the right direction to visualize the operation.

Benefits

• Better understanding of abstract mathematical concepts. 
• Promoting a creative approach towards solving problems.

Break Math Word Problems Down

This one stands out among other steps to solve word problems. Kids often get engulfed in exercises, so breaking them down is a good problem-solving strategy in math. Teach the child to pause and focus on a single part by asking them, “What are the steps in solving word problems?” Crucial note: don’t force them to move to the next part until they understand the previous one.

Practical Tips

• Ask your kid to reflect on each task part.
• Teach them to understand the key information by highlighting it.
• Encourage them to write down each step they take to solve a problem.

Benefits

• Children can improve their accuracy and precision.
• Better focus and concentration on detail.

Estimate Answers First

This approach boosts logical thinking and will be ideally suited for you! According to it, children should be able to “guess” the correct answer without solving the task precisely. This technique helps them avoid common mistakes and make their math learning more intuitive.

Check out how this works in practice:

Problem: “If a pencil case costs $7.45 and you buy 5 of them, approximately how much will you spend?”

Estimation strategy:

• Round $7.45 to the nearest dollar ($7).
• Multiply the price by the number of pencil cases (5): 7 × 5 = 35.

Practical Tips

• Teach your child to use similar benchmarks, like rounding.
• Ask them to make estimations before they complete actual calculations. Turn it into a game form in which they have to guess the right answer, and only then estimate how to solve word math problems.
• Practice estimated calculations when you’re shopping or budgeting to provide real-world context.

Benefits

• Faster mental calculations and better intuitiveness.
• Gaining a deeper understanding of numbers.

Turn Similar Problems Into Templates

Math is based on patterns. Once the child understands this, they will know how to solve word problems step-by-step. Plus, they will be motivated to build their own problem bank with templates for future problems. 

Check out the tasks below. They all follow the same pattern — can you spot it?

Practical Tips

• Ask your child to recognize and write down templates whenever they solve similar tasks.
• Teach the kid to identify keywords that can hint at math templates, like “each,” “total,” or “in all.”
• Modify numbers or context in a solved problem to create new examples. For instance, change “pencils in a box” to “candies in a jar.”

Benefits

• Faster solving time.
• Greater creativity when approaching math tasks.

Use Logical Reasoning For Variables

Start working out problems backward. This means the child should begin with the task result and steadily analyze the steps that led to it. Let’s take this problem as an example: 

Twice a number subtracted from five times itself equals 27. What is the number?

Here’s how your kids can solve linear equations with the backward perspective:

• Let the unknown number be 𝑥.
• The equation based on the problem is: 5𝑥 − 2𝑥 = 27.
• Simplify the equation: 3𝑥 = 27.
• Solve for 𝑥: 𝑥 = 27/3 = 9.

Practical Tips

• To help solve math word problems, teach your child to turn the flow and focus on the final result first.
• Encourage them to practice with similar problems to boost confidence.
• Teach them to simplify the equation steadily, step by step.

Benefits

• Reducing the number of errors.
• Application of the skill beyond the academic setting.

Check Your Answers

When ready with the answer, the child should learn to reread the problem and estimate if the answer fits logically into its context. 

Here’s the flow to follow:

Practical Tips

• Encourage your kids to reread the problem once they are ready with answers. This way, they can check that they haven’t missed any details.
• Try this problem-solver technique with various types of tasks.
• Teach the child to logically estimate the approximate answer before solving the problem.

Benefits

• Boosted reasoning skills.
• Better confidence when working with math tasks.

Draw Lessons From Mistakes

Ask the child to reflect on their mistakes. Why were they wrong? How can they avoid mistakes in the future? How to solve a word problem with their current experience? Detailed analysis is one of the best ways to boost academic performance.

Practical Tips

• Teach them to approach mistakes as an undeniable constituent of a learning process.
• Rework the same problem several times to gain mastery.
• Analyze the error, not just provide the correct answer.

Benefits

• Increased learning resilience.
• Better understanding of math logic.

Examples of solving math word problems

Now, let’s look at these math word problem strategies in practice by solving some more exercises.

Problem 1: Sarah has 24 blue marbles. Her friend gives her 15 red marbles and 7 green marbles. How many marbles does Sarah have in total?

Solution: The strategy you can use is to find the key info

• Identify the numbers (24, 15, 7)
• Find the keyword “total,” which shows that addition is involved

So, you need to add the numbers together, like so: 

24 + 15 + 7 = 46

Problem 2: The bakery had 60 cupcakes in the morning. By noon, they sold 42 cupcakes. How many cupcakes are left?

Solution: The strategy here is to translate the words into symbols. The word left shows that subtraction is involved. So, you need to subtract the number of cupcakes sold from the original number: 60 – 42 = 18 cupcakes left.

Problem 3: A teacher has 45 stickers to give to 9 students. If she wants every student to get the same amount, how many stickers will each child receive?

The strategy here is to break down the problem. The phrase each child and the fact that you need to distribute tickets evenly indicates that you need to divide. So, the solution is:

45 / 9 = 5 tickets for each child.

Conclusion

Although challenging, math word problems don’t have to be scary. With the right approach, your child can learn to solve problems quickly, get some real-world experience along the way, and even start to love them!

Want to help your kid get acquainted with the best techniques for working with those problems? Brighterly is a great place for it. You can see for yourself how the platform works by booking a free demo lesson , so don’t hesitate to check it out!

FAQ

What Are The Steps To Solve Math Word Problems?

The first step to solve a word problem correctly is understanding what the problem says, so your kid needs to read the question carefully. Next, they need to identify the key information in the question and exactly what is being asked. Lastly, they need to write the problem as a mathematical equation and solve it step-by-step. 

What Is The Trick To Solve Word Problems?

This may vary depending on the problem type, but a good and important trick is to focus on keywords that signal specific operations. For example, if you see words like “total” or “combined” in the problem, it’s a sign that you will most likely need to perform addition. Another tip is to visualize the problem through a simple diagram, when possible.

How Can I Solve Math Problems Easily?

You can make solving word problems easier by simplifying them. Break down large, complex problems into as many smaller chunks as possible. Solving math problems is a skill, and like all skills, it needs practice. So, to be able to solve math problems more easily, regular practice is another thing that you need to do.