Solved: A Teacher's Guide to Making Word Problems Comprehensible

Many math teachers long for more guidance in designing lessons for word problems.Solved provides just that.It is written with great clarity and depth and is, above all, practical and applicable in helping teachers have an impact on student understanding of real-world mathematical logic and application. Ms. Kue has provided thorough, current research to establish credibility of her practices, but she goes even further, explaining practical application in her own classroom experiences and adaptations she made as a result. She guides teachers through the process of allowing students to practice mathematical analysis, rather than using simple strategies that often produce immediate answers, but do not foster long-lasting student understanding. This involves structuring the classroom experience for student exploration and communication and supporting teachers in designing questions which promote student investigation of word problems.Along the way, she outlines and gives clear guidance to avoid some of the pitfalls which may occur. Perhaps most of all are Ms. Kue’s references to her own ‘mistakes’. She admits these will happen, but she fosters encouragement to keep pushing forward as she shows the reader what she learned from the experiences and how her students responded as she sought to redirect her teaching processes. All of us will experience less- than-desired lesson results as we refine our teaching skills, but we can circumvent some by reading her documentation of real applications of best practices.She also provides time and questions to help the reader reflect on the content and teaching approaches. Readers get to explore effective scaffolded supports for all levels of student responses in social learning, allowing even the most hesitant students to use metacognitive verbalization in the process of problem solving. Finally, the Appendixes add clear examples of student and teacher reactions.The book is an outstanding practical-guide, helping teachers restructure math classrooms, filling them with academic discourse, visualization, reasoning and mathematical analysis.I highly recommend adding it to your read-now shelf!

Saw the author in person at a workshop. Her methods are great and wanted a follow up to share with teachers. This is a practical and easily implemented approach to building math talk into classrooms.

I had the opportunity to meet the author at an education conference. Ms. Kue presented several strategies for solving word problems. There is no one size fits all strategy when it comes to word problems. You must be able to understand both the numbers and the text. Not every student is prepared to do word problems. This book provides insight into the student mind as well as effective strategies for teaching word problems.

Well this was a surprise summer read. I had purchased it hoping I would get something a little more than CUBES and instead I am left with a completely new understanding of word problems and how to teach them. I had no idea what quantities and values were before and I never thought about words revealing math. The example tasks in the back of the book are extremely helpful as well. I kind of wish I had known this stuff sooner, but I am glad I know it now. I am recommending this book to all my colleagues.

This book is a must have for all math teachers. If you ever wondered why students do not like or understand math, maybe we presented it wrong. This book will reveal some practical and useful methods to teach conceptual understanding of math concepts. Isn’t that what our students are missing the most. Lot of books and PD offer good ideas, but they do not offer solutions. This book is a teacher’s guide how to present problem solving in comprehensible and doable, every child friendly way.