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

This holiday-themed brainteaser looks simple, but it's quietly tripping up adults everywhere. A math teacher walks us through solving it.

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.

Word problems try and tell students a story about the math problem in front of them. They are a useful way to connect abstract numbers to concrete situations, so students can learn early on to apply ...

Math word problems require literacy, math, and executive function skills from young children, so mastering them is key to later school success. Credit: Philip Keith for The Hechinger Report The ...

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, ...

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 ...

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 ...