01
Keyword hunting
‘Left’ always means subtract, including in ‘left in the box after we added’.
Topic hub
Word problems
A word problem is a situation that has to be modelled before it is calculated. Children struggle when they hunt for keywords (‘total means add’) instead of building a picture of what is happening.
Why this concept matters
This is where parents see the panic. The panic is usually a missing concept underneath, not a reading problem — though reading problems exist, and we say so when that is the case.
Misconceptions, in the order we see them
02
Use all the numbers
A distractor number in the story is included because it was printed.
03
The diagram is extra
They skip the sketch, then cannot choose the operation.
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