Together Elise and Chris spelled 27 words correctly. Chris spelled 5 more words correctly than Elise. How many words did each student spell correctly?

words spelled correctly by Elise --- x

words spelled correctly by Chris --- x+5

solve for x:

x + x+5 = 27

Thanks.

To solve this problem, let's use variables to represent the number of words that Elise and Chris spelled correctly.

Let's assume Elise spelled x words correctly.
According to the problem, Chris spelled 5 more words correctly than Elise, so he spelled (x + 5) words correctly.

Together, they spelled 27 words correctly. So the sum of the number of words they individually spelled correctly is 27.
Therefore, we can write the equation:

x + (x + 5) = 27

Now, let's solve this equation to find the values of x and (x + 5):

2x + 5 = 27
2x = 27 - 5
2x = 22
x = 22 / 2
x = 11

So, Elise spelled 11 words correctly, and since Chris spelled 5 more words than Elise, he spelled 11 + 5 = 16 words correctly.

Therefore, Elise spelled 11 words correctly and Chris spelled 16 words correctly.