Farmer Math Word Problems

Pensée critique à la ferme

In Farmer Math you take on the role of a middle school student who is trying to help your family's farm become successful. Your job is to solve a farming math word problem for each week in the year on the farm. It's up to you to ensure that the farm stays in the family for many years to come!

Why Another Math App?

A common question for teachers is, "Why do I have to learn this?" or "When will I ever use this?". Since 2012 I have been teaching Computer Applications in a rural Indiana middle school. Some of my more challenging students over the years have been kids who want to be farmers, and I think it's because they haven't seen how some school subjects will help them in real-life.

Another thing I noticed with many students is that they can struggle to apply math to real-life situations. Most existing math apps don't target middle school students, and the few that do don't focus on solving real word problems or applying math to daily life.

Over the years I've had many interesting situations at school; such as finding a cat in the ceiling during class, toilets overflowing flooding my entire classroom, kids trapping a rat in the hallway and then carrying it outside by the tail, and many other funny situations too. I've tied some of these events into the story and hope that even the most jaded student can hopefully enjoy working through the problems.

What Math Subjects Are Covered?

The target math standards are for 6th grade students. Main topics include ratios, proportion and percent, (some fractions), and basic 6th grade surface area, volume, and perimeter questions. Most advanced topics found in 7th grade and beyond have been excluded from the story problems, but older students may still find the questions challenging.

Skill Levels?

In the settings users can select easy, medium, or hard options. Advanced 5th grade students may be able to solve most of the questions on the easy setting. Sixth grade students should hopefully be able to solve most of the medium difficulty questions, and 7th / 8th grade students or older may benefit from doing the hard questions. The questions select variables randomly each time they're loaded, so if it's helpful, students could re-do the questions for more practice, or try new questions at a different skill level setting.

Questions, Comments, Bugs, Errors, Suggestions?

Please visit the developer website and contact me.