In this video, pay attention to the teacher's questioning techniques and how she holds the students accountable for answering questions.
Students have always had difficulty when it comes to word problems. In the AIS math room, students are solving word problems by drawing bars or rectangles. We adapted this method of problem solving from a math program called "Singapore Math". The videos below are some examples of this problem solving technique.
Here is a video which helps explain the concept behind subtraction. Later in the video, another lesson uses the Singapore Math concept for problem solving.
Here is another video showing how to do multi step problem solving using the Singapore math bars.
Adding and Subtracting by drawing bars.