Organizational strategies that help students break complex word problems into manageable chunks may be the key to solving them, according to a 2025 study.

This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news outlet focused on education. The Hechinger Report is a national nonprofit newsroom that reports on one topic: education.

Students often struggle to connect math with the real world. Word problems—a combination of words, numbers, and mathematical operations—can be a perfect vehicle to take abstract numbers off the page.

Word problems try and tell students a story about the math problem in front of them. They are a useful way to connect abstract numbers to concrete situations, so students can learn early on to apply ...

You can probably think of a time when you’ve used math to solve an everyday problem, such as calculating a tip at a restaurant or determining the square footage of a room. But what role does math play ...

Contextualizing math is the path forward for math instruction across the country--making it relevant help students grasp ...

Segue Institute for Learning teacher Cassandra Santiago introduces a lesson on word problems to her first graders one spring afternoon. Credit: Phillip Keith for The Hechinger Report The Hechinger ...