How many times have you heard math students moan and groan when they see a word problem on their homework or math test.  Word problems aren’t really difficult, but a student must first understand what it is that they are trying to solve before they can work on solving it.  This step sometimes seems like a monster to some students. One way to slay the monster is with lots of practice with word problems. With practice a student will get use to the terminology and what it is asking. 

        I found a great site for a 6^th grade math activity. It has worksheets with varied word problems. There are word problems on divisibility patterns, powers and exponents, order of operations, algebra: solving equations, geometry: area of rectangles, and much more. By using flexible grouping, a teacher can pair up students in buddy teams. You can give each team of students a different worksheet. The teams will work on their worksheets and choose one word problem they want to present to the class. They will present how they solved the word problem. While the students are working in their groups, the teacher can give assistant to teams that need it.

Here’s an example for one of the work sheets:

Divisibility Patterns

MONTHS OF THE YEAR: For Exercises 1and 2, use the table that shows how many days are in each month, excluding leap years. (Every four years, the calendar is adjusted by adding one day to February.)

JAN.      FEB.      MAR.      APR.      MAY      JUN.      JUL.      AUG.      SEP.   OCT.    NOV.   DEC.

31          28          31           30           31         30          31           31          30      31         30          31

1. Which month has a number of days that is divisible by 4? During a leap year, is this still true?

2. Which months have a number of days that is divisible by both 5 and 10? During a leap year, is this still true?

3. The total number of months in a year are divisible by which numbers?

4. FOOD: Jermaine and his father are in charge of grilling for a family reunion picnic. There will be 40 people attending. Ground beef patties come 5 to a package. How many packages of patties should they buy to provide 1 hamburger for each person? Will there by any patties left over? If so, how many?

5. RETAIL: Li is stacking bottles of apple juice on the shelf at her parent’s grocery store. She has space to fit 4 bottles across and 6 bottles from front to back. She has 25 bottles to stack. Will all of the bottles fit on the shelf? Explain.

6. FARMING: Sally is helping her mother put eggs into egg cartons to sell at the local farmer’s market. Their chickens have produced a total of 108 eggs for market. Can Sally package the eggs in groups of 12 so that each carton has the same number of eggs? Explain.

You can find the worksheets on this site:  http://www.glencoe.com/sites/common_assets/workbooks/math/pdf_workbook/m1pwp.pdf