3. Solve real-world and mathematical problems involving the four operations with rational numbers.

Finally! The hero or heroine's training is complete; they're ready to hit the road and straight-up battle some evil. And there's nothing more evil than a mathematical word problem.

Once your students have a solid grasp of adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing rational numbers of all kinds, it's time to toss them into the thick of it. None of this "the journey is the destination" crock; your students need to flex these rockin' new math muscles. They need to unfurl their powerful new math wings and get airborne, capisce?

That's what this standard is for. It's the beginning of the real movie, after the whole training montage is over and the actor is all bulked up and ready to fight. And there are all kinds of different real-world contexts you can use to test your students' math-mettle.

Money problems are always great, even though it's true that mo' money = mo' problems. Let's say Terry and Terri pool their cash and hit up the candy shoppe. If they've got $35.50 between them, what can they buy? Jawbreakers are $1.00 apiece, Chocolate Cockroaches are $0.50 per pound, and Giant Gummi Worms cost $2.10 for three. Using a combination of addition, multiplication, and division, your students should be able to piece together the perfect menu of sweets for Terry and Terri (and there'll be a bunch of possible answers).

Another solid option is to use distance (and fractions of distance) to come up with a real-world problem. For instance, Tyrone's planning on walking from L.A. to San Francisco to raise money for his favorite charity, a distance of miles. If he walks miles his first week and miles this week, how much further does he have to go? Students should know to add his two actual distances, then subtract that from the total he has to finish.

So let's kick out the abstractions and get down to the real nitty-gritty, shall we?