The topic of how to incorporate word problems is a hard one for me. I have personally always enjoyed word problems and I was able to see the beauty and the imagination in them. Perhaps I've also enjoyed them because I was good at them and I was able to show off my skills. But I realize that not everyone shares my sentiments and I do recognize that word problems are often not related to the real world in any way. Acknowledging this, I would love for my students to see the imagination and perhaps partake in creating their own crazy word problem in my future classroom. Depending on the demographic of my classroom, and students opinions, word problems might even be optional in my classroom so that the students who enjoy them can do them and the students who don't, can skip them and focus on something else in the unit that resonated with their learning.
Additionally, I was impressed by the anecdote that Dr. Gerofsky toldin class about her colleague(?) who brought the students outside their classroom to collect data points and then had them work on a relevant word problem. Doing this would change students' impression of word problems and they would probably be more inclined to give it a chance.
Thanks for these thoughtful comments.
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