Reciprocal Teaching As A Comprehension Strategy for Understanding Mathematical Word Problems
by Delinda van Garderen
This particular article focuses on using a strategy call reciprocal teaching to help students understand word problems. Reciprocal teaching places most of the power in the student's hands and allows them to construct their own learning with little assistance from you. The author explained that there are four key components to using reciprocal teaching for mathematical word problems. The author also used this in her classroom and utilized the strategy for a larger group, but for the purposes of this explanation, I will explain how you and your child can adapt this strategy. The first step, as you can see on the left, is clarifying. In this step, your child will read the problem and identify any vocabulary or phrases that need to be clarified. Before moving on, make sure that you and your child work together to clarify any items that he or she identifies. The next step will be for your child to ask you questions about the problem that will identify key components of the problem. In this instance, you will act as the student and your child will assume the role of the teacher. Do your best to answer all of your child's questions. Ensure that they have asked all necessary questions before moving on. Next, your child will summarize everything that they know about the word problem, including the purpose and key parts. Make sure that your child is able to identify all of the necessary components before moving forward. Once that step is completed, your child should develop a plan for solving the problem. Have your child create a list of steps and operations that need to take place in order for the problem to be completed. Provide help as needed.
How Many Baseball Cards Does Jimmy Have? Teaching the Structures of Word Problems
By Jose A. Montelongo, Anita C. Hernandex, and Roberta J. Herter
This article presents readers with a way of understanding mathematical word problems through the use of sentence completion tasks in accordance with graphic organizers. The authors suggest that the first step in this process is identifying the structure of the word problem. They identify five different word problem situations, which include the following: change, group, compare, restate, and vary. The article used the example of a change word problem to convey the message of the article. The authors state that, "In change word problems, the amount or value changes over time by some measure." Once you identify the type of word problem that you are dealing with, it is your (the parent's) job to take the sentences from the word problem and place them individually on a piece of paper, out of order. You want to delete one vocabulary word from each sentence and then have your child fill in the missing words. After this, your child should select the sentences that are needed to solve the problem and put them in a logical order on a graphic organizer. The final sentence on the graphic organizer should be the one that contains the answer. For this sentence, the answer should be the missing part. The article suggests that this strategy gives your child a chance to weed out the unnecessary information and view the problem in a way that is less confusing than the way that a word problem may be initially presented.