My ds was doing this a bit on word problems at first - but I saw it happening and stepped in to discuss with him the various clues that the words are giving you. For all I know this wasn't even discussed by the teacher, but ds might not have been listening either. He is now very very strong with word problems.
Things like:
John has 4 ducks, he gave 2 away. How many does he have left?
I told him to write down the first number he comes to: 4
Then, Look for action phrases, these are your operators.
ex: Give away means minus (I know you know this, but she might not!)
Then write down the next number.
You have most of your equation, you just need an equals sign and a Question mark at the end (or some folks use 'x', but I was refraining from introducing this idea)
4-2=?
Since there are many variations on these, it's great to practice a bunch, especially the figuring out what operator is needed.
DS8 is slow with add/sub. math facts too, but I think we are figuring this out as part boredom/part not getting that it mattered/ part seeing that he could re-add so why memorize?? Still working the issue however! For some reason, so far, multiplication seems easier to him. Whew.
Good luck to you and your dd!
