Updated July 2, 2025

Ask just about any math teacher what their students struggle with the most, and you’ll hear the same answer: word problems! Some have even called them the bane of their existence. And it’s no wonder. These so-called “problems” are really number stories, narratives packed with relationships. 

But instead of helping students make sense of the story, we often rush to solving.

What Teachers Say

In a recent survey, 164 out of 168 elementary teachers agreed that reading and comprehension are the main hurdles to students solving word problems.* Students face common barriers, such as difficulty reading and understanding the problem, uncertainty about which operation to use, and unfamiliar vocabulary or context.

They often can’t picture what’s happening, get lost in the wording, and don’t always know which operation to use. 

The result? Working memory gets overwhelmed. Students shut down. And teachers are left guessing: is this a math issue or a reading one?

Why Guessing Happens

The result is often a haphazard approach: plucking numbers from the problem, relying on recent class lessons, and solving without considering the context. The focus is on finding an answer, rather than understanding the situation.

One teacher put it this way:

“Vocabulary words connected to mathematical expressions. Teaching students that “all together” means “add” confuses them when they come across multi-step word problems or even irregular uses of the word! It keeps them from understanding the action of the word problems. Instead it has them grabbing two numbers and a vocabulary word to create an expression without true comprehension!”

Consider this example:

Jamal had 6 cookies. He had 3 more cookies than Diego. How many cookies did Diego have?

When students focus on keywords instead of comprehending the story problem, they pull out the numbers 3 and 6, see the word “more” and add. But the story isn’t asking for a total. It’s describing a comparison relationship.

The Real Work: Comprehension

Reading comprehension plays a crucial role here. This is not a computation problem. Some students struggle with decoding the text and dealing with unknown words. Others fail to grasp the connection between math and literary stories, missing out on essential comprehension skills.

But there’s one shift they can all benefit from: slowing down to understand what’s happening before solving.

In Comprehending Math by Arthur Hyde, he references George Polya and the four phases of problem solving he identified. The very first, understanding the problem, is not just a box to check. It’s where the most thinking should happen. In fact, Polya suggests as much as 75% of the time spent on a problem should go toward making sense of the situation. That aligns with what we see in classrooms. Students have to understand what’s happening in the story before successfully using strategies or models.

A telling example

This isn’t an issue limited to elementary students. In a study by Robert Kaplinsky, 32 eighth-graders were posed this question:

There are 125 sheep and 5 dogs in a flock. How old is the shepherd?

And even though there was no relevant information to figure that out, 75% of students gave numerical answers, such as 130 (125 + 5) or 25 (125/5). This demonstrates a habit of applying operations to numbers without thinking of context or meaning.

Conclusion

In future posts, we’ll talk about strategies that actually support comprehension, not more steps or tricks. We’ll explore the advantages and pitfalls of traditional methods and models. We’ll also dig into how to help students name the relationship in a story, how to build in scaffolds, and how to shift your language to guide thinking.

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*The survey was administered to 168 elementary school teachers in North Carolina, primarily from Wake County. Respondents were a diverse group of teachers across different grade levels and job titles. Most were general education teachers.