Students often struggle to connect math with the real world. Word problems—a combination of words, numbers, and mathematical operations—can be a perfect vehicle to take abstract numbers off the page.

This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news outlet focused on education. The Hechinger Report is a national nonprofit newsroom that reports on one topic: education.

Las matemáticas. Die Mathematik. Mathematics. No matter the language, the word "math" can cause people everywhere to fill up with boredom, dread, and even anxiety. The problem is so bad that there’s ...