Identify Student's Difficulties Solving Arithmetic Problems

You can use the student's performance on worksheets to see where a student may be having trouble learning arithmetic. Problems may require skills that the student does not have. Identify the student's competency level and gradually increase the difficulty level of problems until the student is successful solving problems at all levels. Problems may be in operations that the student does not understand. You may want to progress through the operations by starting with addition, then proceeding to subtraction, multiplication, and then division. If the student is having trouble with one operation, make sure that they are competent in a prior operation before proceeding. Students may have difficulty with higher skill levels because they do not understand all the steps in solving problems. When working at higher skill levels make answer keys that show the problem and the complete stepped-out solution. Compare all the steps in the student's solution with the answer key to see where in the solution the student had difficulty.

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