help with word problems

[moriah]

Hi All!

Happily my ds (HF autism) is on some of the last lessons on Math 4 TT. This curr has been a life saver after about 6-7 months of skip counting to learn mulitiplications. ds can now do long division, complicated mulitplication, I'm very proud! But, When it comes to word problems he says: so do I add, subtract, multiply or divide? I have tried helping him cross out the extraneous words (which is part of word problems at this level to challenge a child to see what is important in the problem) but unless the problem can be drawn on paper, he doesn't understand what to do. Does anyone know of a specific resource or in your curr that you use, that has a good step by step explaination for deciding what the function should be for the word problem?

Thanks!

[heart'sjoy]

Hi Moriah,

 

Drawing bar diagrams through singapore math's challenging word problems has helped us have success with word problems.

 

Another trick we will use when the child says, "I don't know whether to divide or multiply?" is to rewrite and rework the problem with numbers that are so easy to use you can almost see the answer.

 

Often I'll help them pick an easy answer that is a multiple of the other pieces in the problem.

 

Example: She used 3/8 of 24 yards for a dress. How much fabric was left?

 

Simplified: She used 1/4 of 8 yards. How much fabric was left?

1/4 is easier to draw. I can even pretend I'm talking about 1/4 of 8 cookies. I'd get 2 cookies and there would be 6 left.

 

1/4 ? 8= 2 What operation will make this work? It's the same operation I'll need for the harder numbers in the original problem.

 

The only other tool I know of is to memorize what key words like "of," "more," "each," "altogether," "total," and "less" mean. This method used alone though, limited me to two step problem or less until I learned algebra.

 

If you want to pursue the challenging word problems, I would start with a level that a child could already do in their head. Drawing the diagrams is a skill by itself. The end of the books have reviews that could be used to try many types of bar diagrams that will be needed in the next book.:grouphug: