Helping Students With Emotional and Behavioral Disorders Solve Mathematics Word Problems

Abstract

The author presents a strategy for helping students with emotional and behavioral disorders become more proficient at solving math word problems. Math word problems require students to go beyond simple computation in mathematics (e.g., adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing) and use higher level reasoning that includes recognizing relevant information, disregarding irrelevant information, and choosing the correct arithmetic operation. By teaching a multistep problem-solving strategy and reinforcing completion of each step through a token economy, 4 students improved in their math problem-solving ability and their overall on-task behavior during the work sessions. In addition, 1 student transitioned from a teacher-driven token economy to use the token economy as a self-monitoring system. The author describes this strategy and the accompanying token economy system and provides the results of the intervention for 4 students.

Keywords:

• emotional and behavioral disorders
• math word problems
• strategy