Within the broad area of whole number operations, understanding and solving word problems continues to be an important area of inquiry. In the present study we draw on the framework of representational fluency to examine conceptual and procedural understandings that are exhibited by a group of Malaysian seven-year-olds as they attempted to solve 2-digit addition and subtraction word problems. Preliminary results show that the range of representations that were constructed by the participants as they searched the problem space was limited as was their ability to translate representations. Implications of these findings for further work about using representations are discussed.