Arithmetic Grade Four

Lesson Fifty-eight: Word Story Problems

You should spend some time writing some word problems of your own. They can really be a lot of fun to write. At this time, though, we will concentrate on solving some more word problems. 

     Sue had a 49 jelly beans. She wanted them to
     last her a full week (7 days) and she wanted
     to be able to enjoy the same number of delicous
     jelly beans each day. How many jelly beans did
     she decide to eat each day?
Here are some clues which help us to solve the problem:
  1. NUMBERS: 42, 7
  2. ACTION: Sue wants to split a large group of jelly beans into equal portions to be enjoyed on 7 separate days.
Splitting a large group into smaller groups is a division problem. So, we can re-write Sue's problem like this: 

     49 / 7 = ?
Here's another problem for you to think about: 

      James does 20 push ups every day of the week.
      Every week James' father makes him total up
      the number of push ups he did during the week.
      How many push ups does James do each week?
Here's what we know:
  1. James does 20 push ups a day
  2. He figures out a weekly total for the push ups
We have to assume that James does exactly 20 push ups every day since the word story problem doesn't say that he does more or less on any day of the week.

So, what kind of problem is this? The action performed is a totaling up of the push ups done on the seven days of the week. If the number of push ups done per day was unequal we would perform an addition problem, but since the number of push ups is equal it makes more sense to do a multiplication problem. 


     7 x 20 = ?
In the next activity you will solve some word problems.

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