Learning to read word problems for young children has many aspects. We began with the four children by having them recognize possible, impossible or incorrect number sentences such as:  ? + 5 = 7, 7= 5+?, or 5+3 = 7 or 7+2=5.  This was often tricky and took a while for kids to see that the order you read and write the numbers may make a difference.  

We then moved on to picture problems and tried to construct a math sentence for those pictures.  

This was followed by picture and words for a problem BUT without a question.  We worked for quite a while to decide what the construction of the question might be? Throughout the process we realized that addition might be used to solve a problem when subtraction could also be used. At this point children were asked to write the question and then solve for it. This was tricky. We then moved on to math problems with little illustration and more words.  At this point the teacher read the problem to the group and they had to write the math sentence.  Eventually, it was required that children put a box around the number that was the answer to the question.  This was sometimes difficult because the children weren’t always sure what we “didn’t know”.  They had often solved the problem in their heads before they began writing. (What a good problem to have😊)