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Abstract
This study is a part of a larger study investigating structures of elementary school 3rd grade addition and subtraction word problems used in all resources including text books, supplementary books, teacher produced resources and online web resources. The current study is originated from questions about extensive usage and overexposure of certain problem structures which may cause difficulties for students in understanding of different problem situations they faced in later grades. The purpose of this study is to identify structures of 3rd grade addition and subtraction problems appeared on the online resources which are most frequently used by students and parents as learning aid. Upon determination of 17 most frequently used web sites, 1542 addition and subtraction problems were extracted from these resources. These 1542 problems were than analyzed by researchers and categorized under certain problem structures in the light of theoretical frame of this study. In the second phase of the study descriptive statistics were used in order to understand and define the trends in these problem structures. Findings of this study suggested that certain types of problems are extensively used in all of the web resources. This overexposure to a certain type of math problems may cause difficulties in understanding the non-routine problems in mathematics and real life. When students develop limited understanding for addition and subtraction, they often have difficulties later on when addition or subtraction is called for but the structure is different from the ones they used to do.