Diagrams to Solve Mathematical Word Problems

This study examined the effectiveness of instruction focused on teaching students with learning disabilities (LD) to solve 1- and 2-step word problems of varying types. Three students with LD in Grade 8 participated in the study. During the treatment, students received instruction in diagram generation and a strategy that incorporates diagrams as a part of the procedure to solve word problems. The re-sults indicated that all students improved in the number of diagrams they used and in their ability to generate diagrams. Their word problem solving performance increased. Moreover, the students generated and used diagrams to solve other types of problems. Overall, the students were very satisfied with the instruction and would continue to use the diagrams and the strategy to solve word problems in other classroom settings. Arepresentation in mathematicsinvolves some combination ofeither written symbols, real objects, or mental images (Janvier, 1987). Regardless of the combination, the construction of a representation is critical for understanding the quantita-tive relationships expressed in a prob-lem in order to be able to solve i