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.

Let’s pretend you’re back in math class. You might need to figure out answers to the following questions: If your doctor gave you three pills and told you to take one every half hour, how long would ...

Organizational strategies that help students break complex word problems into manageable chunks may be the key to solving them, according to a 2025 study.

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 ...

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 ...

The puzzles look easy, and mostly they are. Given three words “trip,” “house” and “goal,” for example find a fourth that will complete a compound word with each. A minute or so of mental trolling ...

An acquaintance worked for a small-town bike shop, and a friend told him — in confidence — that a competing shop would be opening soon. He was torn. As most of us do, he reflexively nodded his head ...

Do you sense something problematic about the word “problematic”? The way it’s used has changed a great deal in recent years, so much that it can now seem a little shifty. The journey that brought us ...