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Contributor: Alison Weiss. Lesson ID: 10599
Solving word problems can be tricky, especially when there is too much or too little information. Never fear! Take this lesson with fun online help and learn the trick to solving tricky word problems!
Solving word problems can be really hard! It can be even harder when the problem has extra information that just makes you confused, or if the problem can't be solved because it's missing information.
Find out how to solve those tricky problems now!
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.
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!
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.
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!
Great job learning!
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