They both looked at the total: 1,200. It felt like a puzzle where they finally had the last piece. "So," Anya smiled, "we just subtract the 770 from the total. "
They wrote down the answer just as the teacher, Maria Ivanovna, walked by. She glanced at their work and gave a small nod of approval. For Maxim and Anya, the "scary" problems in the 4th-grade workbook weren't so tough when they broke them down step-by-step. They both looked at the total: 1,200
Maxim and his friend Anya sat in the back of the classroom, staring at their math workbooks. The lesson was "Solving Complex Word Problems," and the page was filled with diagrams of trains, apple baskets, and construction sites. " Anya smiled