Lesson 11 — Activity 3:

Multi-Step Problems

Sometimes math problems require you to do more than one thing in order to answer the question. These are called multi-step problems. When you are asked to solve a word problem that has more than one step, you need to focus on solving one problem at a time in the question before you can find your solution.

In any word problem, the true challenge is deciding which operation to use. In multi-step word problems, there may be two or more operations, and you must solve them in the correct order to be successful.

Before you begin — Here are some tips for answering multi-step questions:

Before rushing to solve the problem, it is worth your time to slow down and clarify your understanding. Be sure you know what is being asked, what you already know from the problem, and what you need to know in order to solve the question being asked.

Use a highlighter on written problems to identify words that tell you what you are solving and give you clues about which operations to choose.

Make notes in the margins by these words to help you clarify your understanding of the problem.

Multi-Step Problems

Your first step in answering multi-step problems is to read the question very carefully. You might also use the think-aloud strategy that you learned in an earlier lesson.

For example:

Olivia has 6 baseball cards. Owen has 2 more cards than Olivia. Oscar has twice as many cards as Owen. How many baseball cards do they have in all?

Let's try another one! The example below shows how to find the answer by also using a highlighter to help give you clues to answer the question.

Steven is reading a textbook that has 260 pages. He read 35 pages on Monday night and 40 pages on Tuesday night. How many pages does he have left to read?

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You can tell that there are lots of things to remember with a multi-step word problem, even when the problem itself is relatively easy. But that’s what makes these problems challenging: you get to use both sides of your brain — your logical math skills and your verbal language skills (working with words). That’s why they are often more fun to do than problems that are just numbers without the details and context that word problems give you. The better you understand how to solve them, the more fun they are to solve!

  Self-check!