(melodious instrumental music) - Hi everyone. And welcome back to Room 9. Our region's largest classroom. My name is Mrs. St. Louis and I'm a teacher at Rogers Elementary School in the Mehlville ...

We like to think that we're pretty good at math, especially after years of schooling. But every once in a while, a simple third-grade math problem manages to trip us up and make us question our ...

It's a math puzzle designed for third graders, but many adults are having trouble solving it. The puzzle looks something like Scrabble, with a series of boxes that snake up, down and across a page.

Students often struggle to connect math with the real world. Word problems—a combination of words, numbers, and mathematical operations—can be a perfect vehicle to take abstract numbers off the page.