Maths word problems - advise please?

[akdmummy]

Just wondering if teachers on here could advise what year you would expect children generally to be able to do maths word problems like the following please?

Please show your full working out for each question:

1. 79 spectators went to a football match. That is 21 fewer people than last week. How many spectators were there last week? and

2. One length of a swimming pool is 25m. Luke has swum three lengths so far. He is trying to swim 125m. How many more lengths does he need to swim?

Many thanks.

My ds did really struggle with word problems in the past.
Drawing diagrams helped him early on.
Also, as Rafa says, breaking down questions helped as well.
But ultimately, doing lots of them and getting used to it helped in the end.

Lots of word problem

Thinking Blocks helps too.

I think most children struggle with word problems, analysis of SATs papers indicate that it's a national problem in primary

Good ideas. I will break them down and also diagrams seem a good option.

Thanks for the links, I will have a look.

I wonder whether that's partly a teaching problem.

I'm not sure teaching words problems was something that was covered all that well during my ITT. Lots of time was spent on progression, models, methods, misconceptions in other areas but not word problems specifically.

Inaccurate reading almost certainly plays a part, but that should have got better.