By: Beanie Geoghegan
“My kids are great at math until the word problems come along. They understand the math operation but still completely freeze when the math is wrapped in language.”
This was one parent’s recent lament to me about math word problems. It is likely the lament of many others as another school year launches and parents try to help their children navigate what’s often one of the more frustrating aspects of math. Ironically, the struggle so many students face with math word problems once again highlights the importance of building and strengthening literacy skills like decoding, fluency, and vocabulary early.
It is not uncommon to hear a proud parent refer to their young child as a “math whiz.” Sometimes, they’ll even ask their child to demonstrate their knowledge to friends and family by counting to 100, adding a set of numbers in their head, or reciting their multiplication facts. These parents are justifiably proud, and the children are understandably confident in their math skills.
When those children enter school and word problems are introduced, the “math whizzes” may suddenly struggle to solve basic equations. That parental pride turns into confusion and concern, and the child’s confidence slowly shifts to frustration and self-doubt. Parents often assume the problem lies in their children’s math skills and discount the role literacy skills play in solving word problems.
Memorization, pattern recognition, automaticity, and fluency are key to children’s acquisition and continued strengthening of numeracy skills, which is why parents and teachers often have them count aloud, practice and recite basic math facts regularly, and demonstrate their mental math abilities. These serve as clear indicators of whether children have a strong grasp of the foundational skills needed to progress successfully.
What is often overlooked or underestimated is that memorization, pattern recognition, automaticity, and fluency are also key to children acquiring and strengthening their literacy skills, and can be practiced and checked as often and in a similar fashion as math skills. Ensuring that children progress steadily in literacy won’t eliminate, but should help minimize, inexplicable struggles with math word problems.
Word problems require students to find solutions by applying their math skills, but first they must apply their literacy skills to understand what problem they have to solve. If they struggle with the latter, it may not matter how strong they are in math.
Doug Lemov, in an article discussing “Dysfluency,” states that “If recognizing words on the page is anything but instant, it will require conscious thought, and that thinking will crowd out more advanced cognitive activities that are required to understand text. When you cannot read words effortlessly, your ability to understand, think about, and remember what you have read is severely limited.”
In other words, students who don’t have the same level of automaticity and fluency in reading as they do in math may find themselves cognitively overloaded and frustrated when faced with word problems. Helping students improve their ability to solve math word problems begins with improving their reading fluency.
Of course, math has its own set of terms that students may be able to decode and read fluently but not fully comprehend. When students encounter words like “evaluate,” “estimate,” “difference,” and “factor,” they may not struggle to read them, but they might not be able to make meaning from them. This can be another obstacle for students who are “math whizzes” until the math problems are “hidden” in the words.
Parents and teachers can help students better understand math vocabulary by explicitly teaching the common terms used in word problems. Talking through the steps while modeling problem-solving, and having students do the same, can also make the math terms more familiar. Adults should not shy away from using the proper terms as often as possible. When the terms become a part of students’ verbal vocabulary, they will be much more comfortable when those terms show up in a written word problem.
Some students will dispute the need to hone reading skills like fluency and vocabulary, claiming they don’t like to read and are more “math-minded.” It may be true that some students enjoy one subject more than another, but parents and teachers should remind those “math-minded” students that most of the problems they will have to solve throughout their lives will be wrapped in language they will have to make sense of. Strong reading skills are a requirement for strong problem-solving skills.
