Students often struggle to connect math with the real world. Word problems—a combination of words, numbers, and mathematical operations—can be a perfect vehicle to take abstract numbers off the page.

This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news outlet focused on education. The Hechinger Report is a national nonprofit newsroom that reports on one topic: education.

Segue Institute for Learning teacher Cassandra Santiago introduces a lesson on word problems to her first graders one spring afternoon. Credit: Phillip Keith for The Hechinger Report The Hechinger ...

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Word problems try and tell students a story about the math problem in front of them. They are a useful way to connect abstract numbers to concrete situations, so students can learn early on to apply ...

Jenny Quinn travels with math in her backpack. She unpacks it piece by piece: bright, 3D-printed shapes that click together into perfect rectangles. As she moves the Fibonacci sequence puzzle around, ...

Jenny Quinn, executive director of the Seattle Universal Math Museum, shows off a solved Fibonacci sequence puzzle. (GeekWire Photo / Maddie Stoll) Jenny Quinn travels with math in her backpack. She ...