How to Teach Elementary Problem Solving Strategies
Teaching problem solving strategies takes time, patience and commitment but results in skills that students can apply throughout their educational career and life. Start teaching these strategies early so that students develop a logical way to think about solving problems. The logical thinking they develop grows with them as their skills develop and they apply it to problems that are more difficult. Without an early start, students begin to form bad habits, blindly muddling through problem solving.
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Instructions
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Locate problem solving practice problems that align with national, state and district standards. Use a variety of problems to practice with students, based on the types of operations your students can attempt. Alter the operations used in any given session, rather than working on just one type at a time so that students must always think to figure out what operation to use. Utilize two-step problems in your practice as soon as students achieve the developmental skills to attempt them.
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Teach problem-solving skills throughout all math lessons. Do not wait until the mastery of an operation through drill sheets to introduce word problems that use that operation. Instead, use word problems as examples of the operations that you are teaching them to complete so that word problems and calculating with different operations occur naturally together.
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Teach students to read the entire problem carefully and figure out exactly what question the problem asks them to solve. Have them circle important words that helped them to understand the question asked. To assist in focusing on that question, have students underline the question.
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Help students to locate the important numbers they need to use to answer the question and to circle or otherwise mark those numbers. Likewise, help students to understand that some numbers may be irrelevant to answering the question and to cross out these numbers and disregard them. Frequently used problems containing extra information so that students must judge each number in a problem to determine its relevance to solving the problem.
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Teach students to identify the mathematical operation needed to solve the problem through a combination of key words, drawing pictures and acting out the problem with manipulatives. Be sure students always use a combination of methods to arrive at the correct operation. Never rely just on key words, as they may be misleading.
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Insist that students show how they arrive at their answer with a combination of an equation, words and the answer. It may be helpful to have them circle their final answer. Teach students to check and see if their answer makes sense in the concept of the problem. For instance, students must realize that a problem, which asks the amount of money left from $20.00 after purchasing several items, should not have an answer greater than $20.00.
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Tips & Warnings
Have students create a "Math Tool Box" to remind them of ways they know to help solve problems. It should consist of a toolbox drawing inside which they write explanations of math tools and strategies to use when problem solving. These strategies include draw pictures, look for patterns, work backwards, guess and check, restate the problem or act it out. Use real life examples as often as possible so that children begin to apply problem-solving strategies to everyday experiences and not just math word problems.
Resources
- Photo Credit www.flickr.com/photos/perspicacious/303144538
