Distance is speed multiplied by time, and every journey question is that one relationship with a different piece missing. These free printable word problems ask for each of the three in turn, with the numbers kept friendly so the setup is the work.
The whole topic hangs on one triangle: distance on top, speed and time below. Cover the piece the question asks for and the arrangement of the other two shows whether to multiply or divide. A child who draws that relationship rather than memorising three separate formulas can rebuild any of them on the spot.
Why this sheet works
Units are where these problems are won or lost. A speed in kilometres per hour and a time in minutes do not multiply cleanly, and the most common wrong answer at this level is right except that an hour and a half was treated as 1.5 or as 90 without deciding which the speed needed. Reading the units before the numbers is the habit to build.
How this one works
One question from this sheet, worked through a step at a time.
How far does it travel?
A train travels at 70 km/h for 8 hours.
A train travels at 70 km/h for 8 hours.
numbers:708
70 × 8
asked:How far does it travel?
70 × 8 =560
560 km
Read it through once and do NOTHING. Grabbing the numbers on the first read means choosing an operation before you know the story, and that choice is the only hard part of a word problem.
Now the numbers: 70 and 8. Finding them is not the same as knowing what to do with them — that comes next, and it comes from the story rather than from the numbers.
Speed multiplied by time is distance — how far you get is how fast you go, taken for as long as you go. So this one is a multiplication: 70 × 8.
70 × 8 = 560 km. And answer the question that was ASKED — "How far does it travel?" — in km, because the sum on its own is not yet an answer.
