Question

over a season in a women's basketball league jackson scored 41 more points than the second highest scorer leslie. Together they scored 1,189 points how many points did each player score

Answer 1

First, you know that Jackson (let call her J) scored 41 more points than L (Leslie).  What we don't know is how many points L scored so we can use a variable that will be 'x'.
So the equation will be J=41+x.
We also know that the total points is 1,189.
To find out what x is we first subtract 1,189-41.  We then get 1,148.
We are now left with 2x and 1,148 so we divide 1,148 by 2 and get 574.
574=x so now we can plug that in.
J= 574+41
Jackson scored 615 points and Leslie scored 574 points

(You can use bar modeling to do solve this problem.  An example of bar modeling is shown below.