Question: Students ask themselves questions including: • What is the problem about? • What information does the problem require? Students may change the wording of the problem or highlight the most important details.

You may want students to discuss these questions in pairs or groups, or in a whole class.  You can also choose to provide students with a SQRQCQ template in which they record their responses to each of the three questioning steps.

Read: Students read the problem carefully, either alone or in groups. Students look for critical information, relationships, and details that they will need to use to solve the problem.

Encourage students to read aloud during this step, to read slowly, and to read any challenging portions more than once.  Students may want to highlight important information.   

Question: Students ask themselves questions about how they will solve the problem, including: • What operations need to be performed? • What numbers need to be used? • What order should the operations be performed in? • What is known, and what is un

Compute: Students solve the word problem. They perform any necessary computations, and/or construct any necessary models, and arrive at an answer.

Make sure to be available to struggling students at this point, to scaffold their efforts to apply their strategies to actually solve the problems.

Question: Students ask themselves questions including: • Does my answer make sense? • Were the calculations done correctly? • Are the units correct? • Does this actually answer the target question? • Were the facts in the problem used correctly?

Students follow the SQRQCQ steps for any remaining word problems with increasing independence. They work alone or in groups.

You can also choose to provide students with a SQRQCQ template in which they record their responses to each of the three questioning steps.

Alone or in groups, in conversation or in writing, students reflect on their learning process.