6.EE.7 — Writing & Solving Equations: Real-World Practice
Practice solving real-world problems by setting up and solving one-step equations with addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division using nonnegative rational numbers.
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Three different problem sets — same skill, same layout, fresh numbers.
Preview — Set A
Read each word problem, write an equation of the form x + p = q or px = q, and solve for x.
- 1.Mia had some stickers. After her friend gave her 14 more stickers, she had 31 stickers in total. How many stickers did Mia start with?
- 2.A baker made some muffins and arranged them equally onto 6 trays. Each tray held 8 muffins. How many muffins did the baker make in all?
- 3.Carlos saved some money over the summer. He then spent $23 on a book, leaving him with $45. How much money did Carlos save?
- 4.A school ordered some boxes of pencils. Each box contains 12 pencils. If the school received 108 pencils in total, how many boxes were ordered?
- 5.Lily collected canned goods for a food drive. After donating 37 cans, she had 19 cans left. How many cans did Lily start with?
- 6.A rope is cut into 8 equal pieces. Each piece is 9 feet long. What was the total length of the rope before it was cut?
- 7.Jordan scored some points in a video game. He then earned 55 more points and finished with 120 points. How many points did Jordan have before earning the extra points?
- 8.A farmer planted rows of corn. If he planted 7 seeds in each row and used 91 seeds in total, how many rows did he plant?
- 9.Sofia had some hair ribbons. After losing 16 of them, she had 24 ribbons left. How many ribbons did Sofia have originally?
- 10.A group of students equally shared the cost of a class gift. If each of the 9 students paid $7, what was the total cost of the gift?
- 11.Marcus read some pages of his book on Monday. On Tuesday he read 28 more pages and finished at page 95. How many pages did Marcus read on Monday?
- 12.A movie theater sold tickets for $11 each. At the end of the day, the theater collected $242 from ticket sales. How many tickets were sold?
- 13.Emma baked some cookies for a party. She gave away 45 cookies, and 30 cookies remained. How many cookies did Emma bake?
- 14.A rectangular garden has a length of 15 feet. If the area of the garden is 135 square feet, what is the width of the garden?
- 15.Tyler had some trading cards. His older brother gave him 38 more cards, and now Tyler has 102 cards. How many cards did Tyler have before?
- 16.A delivery driver made an equal number of stops each hour for 5 hours. If the driver made 60 stops in total, how many stops did the driver make each hour?
- 17.Ava is saving up to buy a bicycle that costs $84. She has already saved $29. How much more money does Ava need to save?
- 18.A science teacher divided 96 students equally into lab groups of 8 students each. How many lab groups were formed?
- 19.Kevin had some baseball cards. After trading away 22 cards, he had 47 cards left. How many cards did Kevin have before the trade?
- 20.A chef uses 4 cups of flour for each batch of bread. If the chef used 52 cups of flour in one week, how many batches of bread did the chef make?
- 21.Nina walked some miles on Saturday. She walked 6 more miles on Sunday and covered a total of 19 miles over the weekend. How many miles did Nina walk on Saturday?
- 22.A school store sells notebooks for $3 each. A student spent $27 on notebooks. How many notebooks did the student buy?
What this worksheet covers
There are 22 story problems here — one page to work, one page of answers to check against — and Sets B and C repeat the layout with different numbers. Within that, each problem arrives as a few sentences of context rather than a bare expression and the quantities are amounts of money, so answers need a dollar or cent sign to be complete. Problems 8 and 15, for instance, are "A farmer planted rows of corn. If he planted 7 seeds in…" and "Tyler had some trading cards. His older brother gave him 38…". The sheet sits inside Common Core 6.EE.7, in the grade 6 Expressions & Equations strand.
Skills practised
At grade 6, expressions and equations is about evaluating expressions, whole-number exponents, one-step equations and combining like terms, and this sheet takes one slice of that. What a student is asked to do here is writing & Solving Equations: Real-World Practice. Concretely, the sheet tests whether a student can read a situation and choose an operation before computing and carry money notation through to the answer.
About the word problems format
The 22 story problems each get a full line and an answer rule; problem 8, "A farmer planted rows of corn. If he planted 7 seeds in…" is one, and the answer key writes the unit with every answer. Translating a sentence into an equation is the skill the drill sheets cannot practise, and the one that matters most.
Set A, Set B and Set C
Set A is the sheet as it was first published on MathSheetLab, and Sets B and C were derived from it problem by problem: each number became a slot redrawn with the same shape, and every answer was recomputed exactly. Where Set A's problem 12 is "A movie theater sold tickets for $11 each. At the end of…", Set B's is "A chef uses 4 cups of flour for each batch of bread. If the…".
22 story problem(s) drawn from the 6.EE.7 context family (x + p = q and px = q stories) — parameters inferred from the standard and grade
How to use this worksheet
Have the student estimate before computing, then compare. At grade 6 an expressions and equations answer that is wildly off should announce itself, and building that reflex matters as much as the 22 answers. Mark the 22 problems the same day using the key — an error caught immediately is a correction, and one caught next week is a habit.
One mistake to watch for
The same operation is not done to both sides: x + 5 = 12 becomes x = 12 + 5. On this grade 6 word problems, problem 15 ("Tyler had some trading cards. His older brother gave him 38…") is the kind of item where it shows.
The equation is being read as instructions rather than as a balance.
Draw a line down through the equals sign and write the inverse operation on both sides of it, every time.
Other grade 6 expressions and equations formats
The same skill in the other formats available at this grade.
- Drill — 6.EE.1 — Writing & Evaluating Expressions with Exponents, 22 problems
- Timed Drill — Grade 6 Expressions & Equations Timed Drill, 60 problems
- Missing Number — Grade 6 Expressions & Equations Missing Number, 24 problems
- Mixed Review — Grade 6 Expressions & Equations Mixed Review, 30 problems
A step either side
The same format one grade down and one grade up — the easier sheet is often the faster fix when this one is not landing.
- 7.EE.4 — Equations & Inequalities in the Real World — grade 7, 22 problems
Word Problems sheets in other grade 6 topics
No paywall and no account — download any set of this grade 6 expressions and equations word problems, and the answers for all 22 problems are in the matching key.