By 5th grade, many students have figured out how to solve story problems. Other students remain completely dependent on teacher models and key words.
Teaching kids to follow a model or to look for key words sounds good, but is it really teaching them how to solve problems? In reality, it is probably only teaching them to solve problems that are presented in the exact same format. This distracts from the real-world element needed in our math instruction.
A great idea I have heard of recently involves presenting the story problems as a reading situation. Present the problem with the numbers covered up, and ask the students to visualize what is happening and determine what they are to do with those numbers before even knowing what the numbers are. This causes them to "make sense" of the problem before they begin manipulating numbers. It is a great strategy, and one that is used in most 3 Act Tasks.
This SMART notebook was created with this idea and CCSS 5.MD.1 in mind. The problems were found in various places, but the notebook presents them all in a format with the numbers covered. This should allow for classroom collaboration and discussion before students solve the problems. After discussion, you can reveal the numbers by clicking on the white boxes. I did not create it thinking that a person would do all of the pages at one time or in the order presented; you can use these notebook pages however you wish, as they vary in difficulty and measurement units.
To go along with the notebook, I created problem labels. Each page of the labels go with a page in the SMART notebook document. You can just print and peel the labels (Avery 18662) to hand to the students to complete independently or with a partner in their math notebooks.
Good luck!
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