(Rate)(Time) = Distance.

  It is hard to teach rate and distance problems to students who have no real reference to the situation.

My students get problems involving trains, buses, or cars.  The village has all of three pick-up trucks in the village but you are not going to get over 20 mph and you can't go past the dump or airport due to the lack of roads.

The closest buses are in Anchorage but Bethel might have one, I'm not sure.  On the other hand, the only train in the state runs from Anchorage up to Fairbanks and is mostly used by the tourist groups.  Its also so much more expensive than a plane trip.  My students are most familiar with snow machines also known as snow gos, or 4-wheelers which you know as ATV's and they know how long it takes to fly to Bethel or Hooper Bay. 

Even those boat questions where the person is able to go such a speed upstream and another speed returning don't work well where I am.  They use boats but the body of water running through the village is actually a slough which is influenced by ocean tides.  Everything around here is based on when high tide occurs because if you head out at the wrong time, you could end up not having enough water and possibly get stuck when the boat scrapes bottom.

I usually end up rewriting these types of problems to include local places using the same criteria as regular textbook problems but adjusted for my students.  This next year, I am going to look at using animal migration and normal travel speeds to create problems they relate to.

In other words, instead of talking about two trains starting in New York at the same time and going opposite directions, I start the snow goes at Chevak and send them opposite directions because most students regularly travel in the winter to Hooper Bay, Scammon Bay, St. Mary's, or other places within a four to six hour range.  Or I might ask about the Mallard Ducks on their trip south for the winter.

They understand this but when they look at the train problems, most barely know what a train looks like, let alone know how fast one might go and may not be able to locate New York on a map. Many never leave the village or if they do, they usually go to Bethel and possibly Anchorage.

Applying it to train and car problems come after, they've learned to work the problems based on their previous knowledge.  I want to create problems based on bird migration because they understand that birds leave in the fall and return in the spring.  They can tell you the order in which the birds leave, and return.  They may not be able to tell me where they go but they see the migration every year.

They also understand movement patterns for seals, walrus, moose, and whale since there is always excitement as hunters share the information for where they found each.  I've seen seals bob up and down in the water when traveling by boat. 

This is how I work on building a solid foundation for students in these types of problems.  Let me now what you think.  I'd love to hear your ideas on this.