Solving Math Word Problems

We are teaching students to use model drawing to solve word problems.  The idea helps them make a picture representation of the problem and look for the part they are missing.  Students are taught to first read the question, and rephrase in a statement using ____ (a blank) to represent the number we don't know.

Here is an example of what it means to make an ump statement.

Now putting into the context of a real math problem.

Here is a few examples of very simple problem...  We are asking the student to create a model that will help them identify the answer.