Five Step Plan For Solving Math Word Problems

Five Step Plan

Part a): The students have to write down what they are asking you to solve math online . Usually this could be found in the sentence containing the question mark. If the question was stated as a command, for example, 'Find the number.' That would become the question to be written in part a).

Part b): In part b) the students had to list what information they were given and assign a variable to the items that were unknown. Included in this section would be a list of items and one of them would be equal to x.

Part c): Part c) is the algebraic equation that is needed to solve for x. Writing the correct equation was often the hardest part of this exercise, but with practice, students became better at identifying the equation to be used. Often it only required the student to translate an English sentence into a math sentence. The verb in an English sentence is equivalent to the equal sign in an equation. The left hand side of the equation comes from all the words in the sentence that appear before the verb. I would instruct the students to write that information down first and then put the equal sign. All the words in the sentence after the verb were transcribed into an algebraic expression and placed on the right hand side of the equation.

Part d): Students would then use the equation that they constructed in part c) and solve the equation for x. This part of the plan requires students to know how to solve various types of equations.

Part e): Using the value for x that they found in part d), students then used that information to answer the question asked in part a). Often finding the value of x is not the answer to the word problem. Students need to check with part b) to see what the x stood for and then use it to answer the question. Students were required to write part e) in a full sentence.

No matter what level of math - pre- algebra, algebra I, algebra II, pre-calculus, calculus, trigonometry, or statistics, using the Five Step Plan helps students to discover exactly what information is given and what they need to find in order to answer a word problem. Often using a diagram can help to identify the variables needed in part b). Once part b) is down on paper, then writing the equation becomes much easier and students can use their equation solving skills to find the answer to the word problem.