Language challenged 3rd graders might find this problem difficult to navigate:
Riverside School had 517 students last year. This year, 60 students moved away before school started. How many students does the school have now?
A nonlinguistic representation to help students create a mental picture of, and organize, the essential information.
| TOTAL | |
| Part | Part |
Substituting the information from the problem, our representation becomes:
| 517 students (Total) | |
| 60 students (Part) | Part |
Using this representation, it is perhaps clearer to students that they are looking for the difference between 60 and 517. They could then solve the problem in one of two ways: by counting on from 60, or by subtracting 60 from 517.
