4 Ways to Make Story Problems More Engaging and Accessible

The math lesson in your Teacher Edition shows the objective, the problems, the questions, and the anticipated answers. But it doesn’t know your students.

Scripted curricula rarely reflect the experiences, learning styles, linguistic needs, and skill levels of all students. Lessons are written about hypothetical students and classrooms. It is up to us, as educators, to move instruction beyond the textbook and into our real-world classrooms.

How do we bring math lessons to life? How do we make them more inclusive?

Over the past decade, in my roles as a classroom teacher and instructional coach, I have identified four simple, effective strategies for modifying story problems in scripted lessons to make them immediately more engaging and inclusive:

1. Begin with an image.
2. Preview vocabulary.
3. Omit the numbers.
4. Offer number sets.

The first three strategies promote comprehension of the problem. Reading comprehension poses a barrier for many students, and these strategies lessen that cognitive burden, allowing them to focus on math. The fourth strategy highlights the importance of differentiation within the problem. All of the strategies are easy to plan for and implement.

Let’s examine these strategies through the lens of a third-grade story problem inspired by a well-known, published curriculum:

Sophia had 171 Rainbow Loom bands. She used some bands to make rings. Now she has 90 bands left. If she used 9 bands for each ring, how many rings did she make?

Begin with an image

Before posing a story problem, display an image related to the context.

Pose the question, “What do you notice?” Then, after allowing time to think, invite students to share their ideas. Prompting them to turn-and-talk or calling on mathematicians to share their thinking whole-group honors the voices and participation of all members in the community.

Here is what a share could sound like:

Teacher: What do you notice?

Student 1: I notice two full columns, and in the third, three spaces are empty. I wonder if the three bags go in the empty spaces.

Student 2: I notice that most of the boxes are one color, but some of them are mixed. The white and red bands are mixed together.

Launching a problem using an image immerses all learners in the same shared context. The open-ended nature of this strategy invites students to share their ideas and builds math confidence. It is also an opportunity to access prior knowledge about the context (Has anyone made a Rainbow Loom bracelet before?) and to preview vocabulary that will emerge in the problem.

Preview vocabulary

When presenting a story problem, it is important to ensure that all students understand the key vocabulary.

Consider the Rainbow Loom problem: What words may be tricky? “Rainbow Loom,” “band,” and “ring” may need to be defined to ensure comprehension of the problem. Previewing vocabulary—inviting students to identify and define unfamiliar words, launching with an image, or front-loading it in small groups—is a quick way to ensure comprehension. It sets mathematicians up for independent problem-solving.

Omit the numbers

By presenting a story problem without numbers, we focus on comprehension rather than computation.

For example, here is the same problem with the numbers omitted:

Sophia had ___ Rainbow Loom bands. She used some bands to make rings. Now she has ___ bands left. If she used ___ bands for each ring, how many rings did she make?

When reading the problem, use the word blank or some to hold the place of the missing numbers. Invite students to ask clarifying questions about the problem. In an effort to encourage flexible problem-solving, try to steer clear of questions that name specific operations (Is this a subtraction problem?) or strategies (Can I skip count to find the answer?). When all questions have been answered, reveal the numbers. This strategy benefits learners who need processing support and those who rush to solve for an answer, inadvertently misunderstanding the problem.

Offer number sets

Offering differentiated number sets allows us to meet the needs of all learners within a single story problem. Scripted curricula use numbers designed for a subset of students who are on-grade level and have mastered the prerequisite skills. In contrast, number sets create multiple points of entry to the problem, promoting engagement and inclusion.

Here are three different number sets that can be provided for the Rainbow Loom problem:

(200 | 50 | 5)

(171 | 90 | 9)

(761 | 569 | 12)

When getting started, consider color-coordinating the blanks and numbers of each set to help students visualize how to set them up. For example, 200, 171, 761, and the first blank could be highlighted yellow; 50, 90, 569, and the second blank could be highlighted pink; and 5, 9, 12, and the third blank could be highlighted green.

The middle set features the numbers from the original problem. The first number set is designed to have more basic computations; for example, dividing by 5 rather than 9 makes this problem more accessible for some students. The third set is the extension, with larger quantities and division by a two-digit number.

Student choice is an important part of working with number sets—resist the urge to assign them. If a student picks a number set that is too easy, let them. Establish the expectation that once they finish one set, they move on to another. If a student picks a set that is too challenging, let them. If they struggle unproductively, check in, commend them for trying a challenge, and suggest they try a different set and come back to this one. The goal is for students to take ownership of their learning and to monitor their own progress. This will help them identify a just-right set in the future.

These four strategies represent small, quick instructional shifts that have the potential to make a big impact when it comes to engaging all students in mathematical learning and problem-solving. These simple modifications to scripted lessons make the content and concepts more accessible for all learners, breathing life into work and motivating students to engage in critical thinking and problem-solving.