Teachers and caregivers use children's books (i.e., trade books) to support mathematics learning in school and home settings; shared book reading offers a unique opportunity to support students' understanding of operations and schema development. No prior studies have examined the representations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and…

Word-problem features such as text complexity, charts and graphs, position of the unknown, calculation complexity, irrelevant information, and schemas impact word-problem performance. We compared the word-problem performance of typically achieving (TA) students and students with mathematics difficulty (MD). First, we measured the word-problem…

In mathematics, the keyword strategy involves identifying a keyword and using that keyword to determine the operation needed to find a word problem's solution. We analyzed 747 high-stakes released items across grades 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. Of these, 57 items did not involve written text. Of the 690 text-based items, we classified 69% as directive…

In mathematics, the keyword strategy involves identifying a keyword (e.g., "altogether") and using that keyword to determine the operation needed to find a word problem's solution. We analyzed 747 high-stakes released items across Grades 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 from the Partnership for Assessment for Readiness for College and Careers and…

Students in the elementary grades often experience difficulty setting up and solving word problems. Using an equation to represent the structure of the problem serves as an effective tool for solving word problems, but students may require specific pre-algebraic reasoning instruction about the equal sign as a relational symbol to set up and solve…

The purpose of this study was to explore the paths by which word-problem intervention, with versus without embedded pre-algebraic reasoning instruction, improves word-problem performance. Students with mathematics difficulty (MD; n = 304) were randomly assigned to a business-as-usual condition or one of two variants of word-problem intervention.…

Many general and special education teachers teach mathematics word problems by defining problems as a single operation and linking key words to specific operations. Unfortunately, teaching students to approach word problems in these ways discourages mathematical reasoning and frequently produces incorrect answers. This article lists eight common…

Solving word problems is a difficult task for students at-risk for or with learning disabilities (LD). One instructional approach that has emerged as a valid method for helping students at-risk for or with LD to become more proficient at word-problem solving is using schemas. A schema is a framework for solving a problem. With a schema, students…