There’s no doubt that I was meant to be a middle school teacher. I love zombies, pirates, unicorns, tacos, and avocados. Once I realized that my love for the random was shared by my students, I found a way to relate to them. Some of my students leave the room and tell me to have a nice avocado. It doesn’t really mean anything, but these inside jokes bring my class together When I practicing with real world problems, or word problems, I make sure to add some of that randomness flair to the math situations. We have a fun time solving these dreaded word problems, and it helps students stay engaged. Today I’ll share with you nine go-to strategies and activities that help students practice solving real world problems with equations.
It can be hard to find real world problems that match the standards for 7th grade. I remember a couple of years ago when I couldn’t find anything for this topic I just made my own problems with my own quirky sparkle. Students enjoyed the unexpected penguin popping up in a math problem, and it reminded me that we can incorporate fun in surprising ways into our math classrooms. In this post you’ll find a compilation of real world problems that use equations. Some of them include multiple problems, where others take one problem and turn it into a performance task. Your students will get the challenge they need completing these problems.
The list:
Real World Simple Equations Worksheets (featuring penguins)
Target Game with Worksheets
CUBES Problem Solving Presentation
Pick a Card with Math-Aids Worksheet
Learn Zillion Cookie Conundrum
Let’s dive in
Solving real world problems is a conceptual topic with a lot of moving parts. Students have to use multiple concepts to set-up and solve these problems. That makes the activities look a little different for this topic than others. I don’t have any mazes or coloring activities for this topic because this topic really has to focus on deconstructing the problem and then solving it. As you’ll see, practicing solving real world problems entails deliberate work and repetition with a variety of situations.
Task Cards
Task cards have so many uses. You can have students work on them independently, with partners, or as a whole class activity. I use them with almost every unit that I teach. Also, they work great as a an activity for students to do when you have a substitute teacher. I just make sure that I print the answers on the back and students can get immediate feedback even when I’m not there.
This Equations and Real World Problems Task Card Set might be my favorite set of task cards that I’ve ever created because of the subject matter. There’s 12 word problems for students to read, write the equation, and solve. Some of the questions talk about topics you’d probably expect: bake sales, movie sales, etc. But others talk about penguins and a zombie family on vacation. I hope that they make kids laugh and do math at the same time. Sometimes I realize that we have to do a lot of practice and it may not always be super exciting, but hopefully little twists like these make kids smile.
In addition to solving real world problems, this set of task cards has 8 equations for students to solve as review. It also includes an extension activity, giving students 4 equations and asking them to write their own equation.
Real World Simple Equations Worksheet (with penguins)
If you need some more quirky story problems, then look no further. This collection of 8 problems with a penguin theme gets students talking. Students need to set up the equation represented in a story, and then they solve.
One of the things my students seem to love is penguins, and when you can add some math, it makes it magical. This works great as a review or a practice activity. Often when I have an activity like this I students check their answers with me after each question. That way I get to see how they are doing and help them fix any misconceptions they may have.
Target Game with Worksheets
With this topic, the activities might look a little different than a skill like distributive property. The problems take a little longer to complete and students have to be able to do more than one skill. When they are first starting out and I want them to try some problems then we’ll use a game like the target game. It consists of throwing a suction cup ball at a target on the whiteboard. To learn more about this game, check out this post.
These worksheets are some free practice to use with students. I like that they have a lot of examples of problems because sometimes kids needs more practice. I use problems from worksheets like these to plays games like the target game. They have a variety of questions and you can do some examples with kids as a whole class. Also, you can choose one problem to use as a worked example in the students’ notebooks.
CUBES Presentation
When we get to word problems, our math class becomes a reading class. We can’t assume that all students can read and understand word problems because many of them struggle. I’ve spent many years working with students who really struggle with reading. I find that having problem solving strategies like C.U.B.E.S. gives students a structure for how to attack problems. You can use this CUBES presentation to see how to introduce the concept of CUBES to your students.
C.U.B.E.S Stands for…
Circle Key Numbers
Underline the question
Box in the clue words
Examine the key words, numbers, questions, etc.
Solve the problem
You can also get this C.U.B.E.S. foldable graphic organizer to go along with this presentation over at TPT.
INB Practice Activity
In this post from Mrs. E Teaches Math you can find different ways to introduce how to solve multi-step equations in interactive notebooks. This is not only a great way of presenting information, it also provides students a reference to go back to. I try to make sure that students have a couple of references to help them when they get stuck. Mrs. E Teaches Math walks through a few examples of how to solve two step equations and examples of how to attack word problems in an interactive notebook.
Want even more ideas for implementing interactive notebooks in your math classroom? Check out our FREE mini-course on how to get the most out of interactive notebooks. It’s a 5 part series delivered right to your inbox. By the end, you’ll have your own customized plan for either starting, or ramping up, interactive notebooks in your class.
CLICK HERE to grab the free math interactive notebook mini-course.
Can’t wait to see you there!
Pick a Card with Math-Aids Worksheet
If you want to practice solving word problem, then you have to give students a lot of opportunities to solve word problems. One way that I like to liven up our practice is through playing the Pick a Card game. I always loved watching the Price is Right when I was a kid, and sometimes I turn myself into the “Bob Barker” of my classroom. This game works by having all of the students complete the problem and then asking them questions about it. The students who answer the questions get to pick a card out of my colossal deck of cards. The student with the highest card wins the points. It just takes a minute and the kids love the novelty of it.
The word problems in this set from Math-Aids are short and basic. These work great as a review or for a sponge activity. They are perfect to have laying around and then in those moments when you have a few extra minutes, you can use them to play the Pick a Card game.
Lesson and Some Problems
CK-12’s webpage has a written out lesson, a video, and 10 problems that students can complete to practice solving real world problems with multi-step equations. This gives students some additional practice and they can go at their own pace. You can also use this as a resource for your own teaching to get some ideas about how to explain this type of problem to students. This site allows you to create classes and students can submit work through the site. Another way to hold students accountable is to have them take a screenshot of the page when they finish and email it to you.
Learn Zillion Cookie Conundrum
With this Cookie Conundrum activity from Learn Zillion students will be led through a complex problem with videos. The teacher guides the students and gives scaffolding as you go. It also includes some additional questions to start to give the control of the thinking over to the students. If you sign-in to Learn Zillion, which you can do with your Google email account, you can get additional resources. One of them is an intervention assignment. The assignments can be assigned through Google Classroom. One of the great things about this set of activities is the support that the program gives as you go.
Illustrative Mathematics
The last activity on this list works great as a performance task. In this Gotham City Taxis task from Illustrative Mathematics students can arrive at the solution using a variety of mathematical methods. You can have students complete this question as a challenge problem of the week or in small groups. What I love about this problem is that students will approach it in different ways. The problem involves finding the price of a taxi and it really gets students thinking. When all of the students finish you can have them share their method with the class. As a class you can compare and contrast the methods that students used. This helps kids to see that you can solve problems in different ways.
Try one thing
Every year when you teach the same thing over and over again, it’s nice to add something new. One of my colleagues has been teaching math for a very long time and she is traditional by nature. She always tells me that she likes to try new things. It keeps her challenged as a teacher and the students appreciate the effort. I hope that you take the leap and try one of these activities, and maybe let your inner unicorn, penguin, or pirate come out during the school day.
Thanks so much for reading. Until next time!
