Alejandra García Alcalá, Jonathan Vázquez Maldonado
y Luis Zarzosa Escobedo
Abstract: Mathematical word problems are a common school practice for teaching meaningful mathematics. Based on a direct teaching strategy approach, the purpose of this study was to expand the external validity of the Xin, Wiles and Lin (2008) model for solving math word problems. Two boys and one girl about 9 years old, 4th graders struggling with mathematics, were instructed. The math problems were multiplication and division in the form of sentences. The students were taught to answer strategic questions and to use an algebraicoutline so that they could detect the common structure of the math problemsand solve them. The three students had great improvement from the pretest to posttest and two of them learned to solve division problems with fewer attempts.The significance, practical use and transfer to new problems are discussed.
Keywords: strategies; teaching; elementary school; basic math operations.
