Solving Repeated Addition Word Problems with Haircuts

Khan Academy

This educational video guides students through solving a math word problem involving repeated addition and data interpretation. The narrator breaks down a scenario where a character named Rafael gets two haircuts every season, using a visual table to organize the information across Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. The video demonstrates how to translate a real-world situation into mathematical expressions. Key themes include repeated addition as a foundation for multiplication, interpreting data tables, and evaluating multiple mathematical expressions to find equivalent values. The video explicitly models how to extract numerical values from text and verify them against provided options, reinforcing the concept that the same total can be represented by different number sentences (e.g., 2+2+2+2 and 4+4). Ideally suited for early elementary classrooms, this resource helps teachers introduce or reinforce the connection between word problems and arithmetic operations. It provides a clear visual model for tracking data and offers a practical opportunity for students to practice checking their work by evaluating multiple-choice answers against their calculated total.