Arithmetic Grade Four

Lesson Fifty-eight: Word Story Problems

Word story problems can contain arithmetic problems using any of the basic arithmetic operations we've discussed up to this point. We can have word story problems which contain addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division problems. How can you tell which kind of problem is in a word story problem. Take a look at this one: 

	Jasper had seven cups. Each cup contained
        eight ice cubes. How many ice cubes did
        Jasper have in all?
To help you to better understand the problem you might draw seven cups and draw eight ice cubes in each. You could then figure out the answer to the problem contained in the word story problem by counting up the ice cubes. But what kind of problem is it that you are solving?

There are two reasonable ways of interpreting the problem: 


    IDEA ONE: 8 + 8 + 8 + 8 + 8 + 8 + 8 = ?

    IDEA TWO: 7 x 8 = ?
Idea two is the best way of re-writing the word story problem as an arithmetic problem since it is shorter and more to the point. Idea one is also right, but idea two is better.

Here's another word story problem for you to solve: 


    Jasper had 72 ice cubes in a tray. He also had
    seven cups. He wanted to put an equal number of
    ice cubes into each cup and he wanted to put as
    many ice cubes as possible into each cup. How many
    ice cubes could Jasper put into each cup?
We could think of this problem as a subtraction problem, but it would be far better to think of it as a division problem: 

	72 / 7 = ?
In the next activity you will decide if the problem is best seen as a multiplication (M), division (D), addition (A), or subtraction (S) problem.

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