Getting Past the Words: Answering Contextual Math Exam Questions

Course Overview

This is a course for students who are in their penultimate or ultimate years of secondary school and, like many others, find that they are lacking in confidence with regards to longer, context-styled mathematics exam questions. Word problems can often pose real challenges to students as they require multiple steps to achieve the solutions; reading and comprehension of the text, identification of the question that is being asked, and creating and solving an appropriate numerical equation. The course is designed to teach students how to do just this; deconstruct the text, locate the appropriate information for the question, and implement existing mathematics knowledge from their schooling to answer the question. The main goal of this course is to increase confidence and prevent failure when answering this style of question due to exam panic or being overwhelmed with questions that may seem like the information is hidden.