Bar Models

This morning I taught Primary 4 students word problems using bar models. I expected the students to get a clear picture by it, but actually not. They were so impatient to compute directly, even without reading the question :( They just depended on my instruction whether to multiply or to divide. So, I'm thinking of an activity at the beginning to introduce the bar model to them - perhaps by making the bars using color papers.

Teacher in Indonesia

This is not unexpected if the students are already used to a computational approach. All they want to do is to compute. Without a clear understanding of the problem, they will not be able to identify the correct operations.

Bar modelling begins in kindergarten when a teacher models the story using the real things and later pictures of the real thing. Later, 5 unifix cubes / snap cubes are used to represent, say 5 sweets. By Primary 2, they begin to use a bar to represent quantities.

Your idea of using paper strips is excellent. I do it all the time.

You can also give problems without numbers.

Johan has more sweets than Siti.
How many sweets does Siti have?

After students show the correct bars for number of sweets Johan has (longer) and number of sweets Siti has (shorter), tell them Johan has 6 sweets more than Siti. Ask them to put in the new information on the bar models. Finally tell them that Johan has 14 sweets. Get them to solve the problem.

Hope this helps.