Keywords have been a plague in math instruction. What do I mean by a plague? Keywords are a contagious disease that kills reasoning. It causes trouble, irritation, suffering, and sometimes tortures. Yeah, it is that extreme. It is crucial that we lay these keywords to rest once and for all. To do so, we need to shift our instruction.

What Are Key Words?

Let’s backtrack to what keywords are in math. Keywords are specific words in word problems that are meant to tell you what operation you should use. For example, when you see the words ‘total’, ‘more,’ ‘altogether’ it means use addition. There are keywords made up for each operation. They are often confused with math vocabulary words which are quite different. Vocabulary words, for addition, would be “addends” and “sum.” Keywords are often introduced as early as Kindergarten and carried through most of the elementary school years. Keywords are in classrooms, plastered across Pinterest, and sold on Teachers Pay Teachers. Parents also use this shortcut with their children.

Do Keywords Help Or Hinder?

Do keywords help students become problem solvers? Do they help students build reasoning skills? Or are we setting students up for confusion and failure? The following four concepts on why keywords hinder our mathematicians are from Teaching Student-Centered Mathematics J.Walle, L. Lovin, K. Karp, J. Bay-William

1. Keyword strategies send the wrong message about doing mathematics.

When students focus on keywords, they ignore Math Practice 1 – Make Sense Of Problems And Persevere In Solving Them. Students look for shortcuts. They often feel like they don’t even need to read the problem. They are forced to circle numbers, hunt for these keywords, and solve. There is no sense making here. There is no reasoning. There is no problem-solving. Here’s an example: How Old Is The Shepard? Video

2. Keywords are misleading.

Take a look at this video. The student here is using keywords to help with their word problem.

Example 1) Dylan gave 8 crackers he didn’t want to Delia. Now Dylan has 16 crackers left. How many crackers did Dylan have to begin with?

Students’ view: “My teacher said gave and left mean to subtract.

Example 2) There are 4 crayon boxes in the classroom. Each crayon box has 12 crayons. How many crayons are there in all?

Students’ view: “Wait, my teacher said each was multiply but in all means to add. What do I do here?”

These are examples of how keywords don’t always work. If we were to circle the numbers and go by the keywords, we would solve these word problems incorrectly. These shortcuts give students this false sense of security, and then we rip it away when we present different types of word problems. With this being said, throw that C.U.B.E.S strategy right out the window as well.

3. Many problems have no keywords.

When students are exposed to shortcuts, they have no strategy, so they resort to what I like to call the “grab and add.” You don’t know how often I have heard teachers say “they just add whatever numbers are in the problem.” Sure they do, these kids have no strategies. You told them to hunt down things that may not exist everywhere. Here is an example of that.

There are 12 apples on the table. 4 are red, and the rest are green. How many green apples are there?

We are promising students that these keywords help them figure out what they are supposed to do. What should students think when they don’t have the keywords? See the problem here?

4. Keywords don’t work with two-step problems or more difficult problems.

Who should care most about this concept? K-2 teachers. If you’re a K-1 teacher you’re probably thinking, but I don’t touch two-step word problems, why should I care? You are the foundation! If you are presenting keywords, other teachers have to undo this later. Do you know how difficult it is to “unlearn” something? It’s possible but difficult. When you give shortcuts, it leads to academic gaps.

I spoke to a teacher this year that mentioned: “But it helps the kids.” My point here is it doesn’t. It may feel like it is because it got kids through the word problems YOU presented. But once those students meet fractions. Game over! Most students can’t distinguish which operations to use. We would have a lot less “grab and add” if we presented “stop and think.”

What Are Some Strategies We Could Use Instead?

1. Focus on the concepts of operations, not words.

What do I mean by that? Focus on the big ideas of each operation. What is addition? What does it mean? What does it look like? How can we represent it? When students truly understand what that means they will be able to reason when they should use it depending on the context. Word problem structures are essential too. Teachers need to be experts in these word problem types. Then we could get to the meaning behind them.

2. Make Word Problems a hands-on experience.

Let them touch it, move it, talk about it, write about it. 

3. Make sure the situations are culturally relevant, so students could put themselves in the experience.

Slapping the name “Maria” on a word problem does not make it culturally relevant. I’ll be writing more on culturally responsive teaching in future posts.

4. Have students create their own word problems.

Math practice #2 asks for students to contextualize and decontextualize. Students need to see naked numbers (2 + 3) and put it into context in their own words. It is good for the brain. The right hemisphere is often called the creative side of the brain, while the left hemisphere is the logical side of the brain. Why not have students use both? It can’t hurt. Something else to keep in mind is that by having students create problems of their own you are giving them an opportunity to share their culture and norms with you. Read more about the Levels of Culture here or check out this book Culturally Responsive Teaching

5. Try numberless word problems.

These help students think about the math situations before inputting digits that they want to grab automatically.

6. Present word problems without questions.

For this you can use the I notice/I wonder strategy. By leaving the question out at first students are then focused on looking at the math story. Have them talk through what they are noticing and wondering about the problem. It helps them make sense of the situation.

7. Take away the expectation to solve. 

You would not believe the amount of anxiety that is reduced in students when you remove the need to solve. Many students are NEVER exposed to this strategy. For that reason, this one is one of my favorite strategies. By removing the solving portion, students have no choice but to only reason. Once you use this strategy, you’ll find that after some time, students WANT to solve the problem. Isn’t that what we want in the long run? For students to not be intimidated by problems but instead to want to engage with them.

The message of avoiding keywords is not new, but our classrooms still seem to be plastered with these posters. Let’s pull down the keyword charts. Let’s stop creating resources for them on Teachers Pay Teachers. Let’s talk to parents about different strategies we could use instead. Let’s make our instruction focus on sense-making and reasoning.