3 Reasons Your Child Knows the Math but Misses the Word Problem

Why does a child who knows the math miss the word problem?

A word problem is a reading job before it is a math job. Your child has to read the story and keep it straight. Then they work out what the question wants. Only then does the math start.

Dr. Sarah Powell studies math teaching at the University of Texas at Austin. Her team counted the words in typical word problems. She calls the amount of reading “staggering.” Then come the units. A problem talks about cats and dogs, but the question asks about pets. Another talks about light bulbs, but asks about packages of light bulbs. Miss that, and good math still gives the wrong answer.

Heather from the Made for Math team sees one more slip. A child works the whole problem, then writes the total as the answer. But the question asked for a missing part. The math was fine. The reading of the question was not.

Our position is that a word problem needs two skills at once. One is reading for meaning. The other is math thinking. Are the math facts solid, but the word problems shaky? Then look at the reading part too. We wrote more on why a reading struggle follows a child into math.

Why do math words trip up a child who talks well?

Math has its own words. Powell says a child needs hundreds of them to fully join in math class. Many of them, she says, a child never hears until math class. They are not dinner table words.

Some children carry more of this load. Powell names three groups. One is children learning English. Another is children with speech or language struggles. The third is children who find reading or math hard. She says they need more support with math words than other students get.

Other math words look familiar, and that is the trap. “Base” means one thing in baseball and another thing in math. Your child thinks they know the word. In math, it means something else.

So give math words some home time. Powell’s team is testing a one-page word map. Try your own version tonight:

• Put one word at the top, like “numerator.”
• Add a kid-friendly meaning and a quick drawing.
• List the words that travel with it: denominator, fraction, parts of a whole.
• Play a guessing game. One person holds the word on their forehead. The other describes it.

Powell’s reason is simple. Practice is how children learn math, and that goes for math words too. For the bigger picture, see the core skills of math.

Does “total means add” help with word problems?

Many of us learned the keyword trick. “Total” means add. “Share” means divide. “Less than” means subtract. Some classrooms still hang keyword posters sorted by operation.

Powell calls this “a big no no.” Test writers know children hunt for keywords. So a problem with “total” in it might need subtraction, or even division. Plenty of problems have no math keyword at all. Words like “gave,” “lost” and “longer” carry the meaning. In problems with more than one step, she says the trick “spectacularly falls apart.”

We agree with her. A keyword points at an operation. It does not tell your child what is happening in the story.

Powell pairs two things instead, and uses them together. First comes a step-by-step plan, like UPS Check: Understand, Plan, Solve, Check. Second comes a question about the story type. Are parts put together for a total? Are two amounts compared? Does one amount go up or down? Her team shares free posters for both. She says where to find them at 34:48 in the video.

Try it tonight, with one problem:

• Have your child read the whole problem first, before any numbers come out.
• Ask “What kind of story is this?” before you ask “Add or subtract?”
• Name what the question asks about. Pets, or cats? Bulbs, or packages?
• Put a label on the answer, then say it in a full sentence.

Thinking in steps like this is a skill of its own. Read more on logical reasoning.