This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news outlet focused on education. The Hechinger Report is a national nonprofit newsroom that reports on one topic: education.

Students often struggle to connect math with the real world. Word problems—a combination of words, numbers, and mathematical operations—can be a perfect vehicle to take abstract numbers off the page.

Word problems are often described as “math stories” and can put complex mathematical operations into a more approachable form for students. But students often struggle when they see a combination of ...

Math vocabulary alone isn’t a silver bullet—but research shows it’s linked to stronger academic achievement when paired with expert teaching practices.