After teaching third grade, I realized just how important it was to make sure students do rigorous multi-step word problems in the primary grades.
Last year, I made it a point to be sure that my 1st and 2nd graders were solving word problems that required them to do multiple operations and read closely in order to find the solution.
I searched so many places, but couldn’t find very many good ones that were appropriate for 1st and 2nd graders. So, I ended up making them myself! Each week I had my students do 4-6 word problems as part of our math workshop. I’d look over them with the students and would create 4-6 new word problems for them based on what they needed to work on. I had at least 4 levels of word problems going on each week in my classroom! Talk about a lot of word problem creating…
If you don’t have 100s of multi-step word problems saved somewhere or don’t want to spend hours and hours creating word problems like I did, you may want to check out my multi-step word problem scoot.
I plan to use it at the beginning of the year with my 2nd graders to see how well they do, and then create word problems based on that.
Having young students solve rigorous word problems has become very important to me. I’ll be putting together more word problems throughout the school year for various levels, so be sure to check back on my blog or at my TPT store to grab them if you’d like them as well!
I’m sure you’ve heard it plenty of places by now, so I’m just going to simply say… don’t forget to check out my store when you’re shopping the TPT sale!
