Helping your child with word problems

A child who can add and subtract fluently can still stare blankly at a word problem. The difficulty is rarely arithmetic — it is turning a paragraph into a calculation.

Read it twice, differently

The first read is for the story. The second is for the numbers. Ask: what is the question actually asking me to find? Say it back in your own words before touching the numbers.

Draw it

A simple bar model turns most KS2 word problems into something visible. Two bars, one longer, with the difference marked — the child can see the subtraction.

Useful questions to ask

• What do we already know?
• What are we trying to find out?
• Will the answer be bigger or smaller than the numbers we have?

That last question catches more errors than any amount of checking, because it forces a child to think about meaning rather than following a procedure.