Story Problems

Math, Story Problems, TPT September 8, 2013

I love teaching story problems. When I was a kid, I actually despised doing them. Something about seeing words in a math problem freaked me out. Now, after being CGI (Cognitively Guided Instruction) trained and after using story problems extensively at my old school – I love them! They are a great way to hit multiple Common Core Math Standards and a great way to get kids thinking and sharing their strategies.

I came up with a Back to School Packet of Story Problems for 2nd graders, which is on Teachers Pay Teachers, here. This packet could also be used for high first graders or for 3rd graders in need of some interventions. In this packet, I have 4 story problems for each type of joining problem and 4 story problems for each type of separating problems. In addition to the 4 story problems, each story problem has 3 presentation choices. The story problem can be printed with a graphic, with number choices (great differentiation), or on a half sheet to save paper. This document can be edited so you may change the numbers, names (students love to see their own names in the problems), or the problem.

Here are a few student samples from this week in my classroom:

For this problem, my student chose to use the 10 frame to help her organize her problem. She put 25 dots on the one side and 10 on the other. Then, she counted by 10’s, 10, 20, 30 and then the 1’s, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35. Nice number sentence too!

This student used the place value model to figure out this problem. I was so excited because we really focused on place value this week. Most of my kiddos are still stuck on drawing everything out by 1’s so I was excited that this student was ready to move on to place value. She has two tens sticks and 5 ones and then another ten stick. Then, she counted the tens and then the ones and got 35.

So, here is a little sample of my TPT creation that you can check out here…