Kaeli S. answered • 09/26/21
Certified Special Education and Elementary Math & Reading teacher
When you look at a word problem like this, the first thing to do is to break it down.
What is the question asking me to find? It is asking how many trees will be planted on elm street and how many on maple street.
What information is the problem giving me? There are 18 trees all together, and there will be two times as many trees on elm as on maple.
What steps do I need to take to solve the problem?
If t stands for the number of trees, I know that 2t(elm street) + t(maple street) = 18.
I also know that multiplication is the same as repeated addition so that sentence could also say t + t + t = 18 or 3t = 18. To solve for t, I would divide 18 by 3 to get t by itself on one side of the equation. Therefore t = 6.
Now I go back to my original equation. 2t = elm street, plug 6 in for t and elm street has 12 trees. Maple street = t so maple street has 6 trees.
