Sign Up
School Account Sign Up
Contributor: Elephango Editors. Lesson ID: 10621
Struggle with word problems? Learn the clue words that tell what operation is needed to solve the problem! In fact, become such an expert that you can write your own problem!
Read the story below, but don't try to answer the questions just yet.
Emma loves spending time in her backyard garden. She plants colorful flowers, juicy strawberries, and crunchy carrots.
On a sunny day, she counts the number of flowers in her garden to see how many more she needs to plant. Emma counts 12 red roses, 8 yellow daisies, and 10 purple pansies.
Once Emma finishes counting her flowers, she notices 15 friendly butterflies have come to visit her garden. Emma watches 4 butterflies flutter away from the red roses, 3 from the yellow daisies, and 2 from the purple pansies.
Emma's younger brother, Liam, sees her counting and wants to join the fun. He spots some ladybugs crawling on the leaves of the strawberry plants. There are 5 ladybugs on 3 strawberry leaves.
Emma shares the strawberries she harvested from her garden with her friends. She collected a total of 20 strawberries.
Maybe it was because you couldn't decide which operation to use to solve it!
When solving a word problem, it is essential to read the question carefully to know exactly what it is asking you to do.
Before you solve the problem, you want to identify and isolate the important information. Then, you can look for word clues to help you determine which operation you need to perform to solve the problem!
Watch the following video to learn the clues for discovering addition and subtraction word problems.
Keep going with this next video to learn the tricks for multiplication and division problems!
Use the Word Problem Clue Words Chart, found under Downloadable Resources in the right-hand sidebar, to check your thinking.
Then, take this chart to the Got It? section to help you practice solving word problems!
FAVORITE
Like