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Comprehension and Solving Math Word Problems

Jean Mistele

Fundamentally, the ability to integrate the reading component of literacy into mathematics is an im portant characteristic of literacy and a critical as pect of solving mathematics word problems. Liter acy and mathematics are usually joined together through writing and listening, while reading takes a back seat. For example, teachers will use math journals to help students learn mathematics (Kostos & Shin, 2010), or students listen to their peers as they explain their solutions. Likewise, teachers rely on students' listening skills when leading a class discussion or when they have stu dents listen to them as they recite or read a word problem aloud. The latter occurs most often among elementary students (e.g., Hiebert & Grouws, 2007; Staub & West, 2003; West, 2016). We be lieve that reading comprehension strategies, in general, offer a way to integrate reading compre hension into the word problem - solving process. This requires students to engage in two types of comprehension - reading and mathematics - that we call thinking strategies (Mistele & Hilden, 2021). Reading comprehension and mathematics word problem solving success require metacognition. The Merriman - Webster dictionary defines meta cognition as “ an awareness or analysis of one's learning or thinking processes ” ( Merriam Webster, n.d.). Research on metacognition in gen Background

eral and specifically in mathematics, has demon strated the value of monitoring one's own cogni tive processes (e.g., Pennequin, Sorel, Nanty & Fontaine, 2010).

Likewise, mathematics teach ers identify some students as number grabbers be cause they quickly grab the numbers in the word problem and apply an operation to them without understanding the problem or what is being asked. The student may perform the operation correctly, but it may not answer the given question, which indicates they have a shallow comprehension of the problem. In contrast, strategic readers, cognitively aware readers, can easily draw on a variety of read ing comprehension strategies when they struggle to understand the text (e.g., Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995). Likewise, in mathematics, we aim to have students use problem solving strategies such as R.U.N.S. to help them solve the problem. For this strategy, R represents read the problem, U stands for underline the question, N stands for name the problem type , and S reminds students to write a strategy sentence . When solving word problems, students need to comprehend the mathematics of the problem in ad dition to reading comprehension. Problem compre hension is defined as “ each sentence is translated

Virginia Mathematics Teacher vol. 48, no. 1

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