Extra or Missing?

Lesson Plan - Get It!

Audio:

Word problems are just plain hard sometimes!

They are even harder when there isn't enough information to solve the problem or if there is too much information put into the problem. Sometimes this is called extraneous information. Extraneous means more than what is needed.

• Do you see the word extra in there?

Let's take a look at the Chickens and the Eggs word problem below. In this word problem, there are some extra words that we really don't need to solve this word problem.

Sam lives on a farm. Sam owns twenty brown chickens and one rooster. Every two weeks, each chicken lays ten eggs. How many eggs will the chickens lay altogether in one month?

One strategy you can use to solve word problems is to remove or cross out the extra words in the problem.

Let's do that:

Sam lives on a farm. Sam owns twenty brown chickens and one rooster. Every two weeks, each chicken lays ten eggs. How many eggs will the chickens lay altogether in one month?

Another strategy you can use is to highlight the important words and sentences needed to solve this problem.

As you can see, the important sentences, questions, and words are highlighted in yellow:

Sam lives on a farm. Sam owns twenty brown chickens and one rooster. Every two weeks, each chicken lays ten eggs. How many eggs will the chickens lay altogether in one month?

So, now we have all of the information we need!

• Can you solve this word problem?

20 chickens multiplied (x) by 10 eggs equals (=) 200 eggs in two weeks

Since there are four weeks in a month, we need to multiply (x) 200 eggs by 2.

• What do we get?

400 eggs!

So, the chickens produce 400 eggs in one month.

If we didn't have the highlighted information in the Chickens and the Eggs word problem above, we couldn't solve this problem.

For more on tricks to solve word problems that have too much or not enough information, check out Identify Missing or Extra Information from Scholastic Study Jams!

• Click on the green STEP BY STEP circle to begin.
• Use the Show Me and Next buttons to navigate through the steps.
• Once you have finished with the first problem, move to the next example by clicking the Watch Out! tab.

Great job learning!