situation and solution equation

Interesting! I had never seen the phrase "situation equation" though I think I would have guessed the meaning given in Denis' links. If we have the word problem "Alexander has 4 apples less than Betty and Betty has 20 apples. How many apples does Alexander have?" then the "situation equation" is (letting "a" be the number of apples Alexander has) "a+ 4= 20" and the "solution equation" is "a=16".
 
I've seen it taught where a+4=20 is the situation equation (model), but a=20-4 is the solution equation, and a=16 is the answer.

This was in an elementary school. They used open squares to represent unknowns (like fill-in-the-blank).
 
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