Jumpstart! Thinking Skills and Problem Solving

Games and activities for ages 7–14

Steve Bowkett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317667322
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Jumpstart! Thinking Skills and Problem Solving presents a collection of simple to use, multi-sensory games and activities which will jumpstart students' understanding of problem solving in action. If you are one of the thousands of teachers looking for a range of practical and fun ideas to engage pupils in effective proactive learning, then this is the perfect book for you.

Specifically written to help teachers work within the guidelines of the new curriculum, activities in the book will help pupils to explore and learn a wide range of problem solving and independent thinking skills in an atmosphere of fun, mutual support and tolerance.

Sections within the book reflect key areas of the new curriculum and offer a treasure trove of ideas for building problem solving and thinking skills into daily teaching.and provide tried and tested methods of helping children 'learn how to learn'.

Areas include:-

• Building problem solving confidence
• Thinking and problem solving in literacy
• Thinking and Problem solving in science
• Problem solving in philosophy
• Emotional resourcefulness and life skills

Jumpstart! Thinking Skills and Problem Solving will celebrate the joy of critical and independent thinking and become a vital resource for all classroom teachers at Key Stage 2 and 3.

CHAPTER 1

Jumpstart the problem-solving attitude

The Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines a problem in the following ways:

• a doubtful or difficult question or task

• a thing which is hard to understand

• a proposition in which something has to be constructed

• an enquiry starting from given conditions to investigate a fact, result or law.

Roget’s Thesaurus adds to the concept by offering a number of synonyms and closely related ideas: enigma, difficulty, worry.

What all of these have in common is the fact that problems by their very nature require sustained active engagement from those who are set the task of trying to solve them. An almost universal characteristic is that problems are difficult and that hurdles, setbacks and disappointments are commonly part of the process. Added to that there is always lurking in the background the possibility of failure. As such, in developing children’s thinking and problem-solving capabilities we must from the outset seek to establish in them the ‘problem-solving attitude’, which embodies features such as:

• determination: the ability to sustain a fixed intention;

• resilience: the tendency to ‘bounce back’ in the face of complications or failures;

• creativity: the ability to generate multiple strategies that may resolve the issue;

• flexibility: the willingness to tolerate ambiguity and uncertainty during the problem-solving process. Linked to this of course are the attributes of patience and tolerance;

• playfulness, which supports all of the above and makes problem solving an enjoyable pastime. Of course, when problems are serious and personal it is difficult to be ‘playful’ in any light-hearted sense, though maintaining a positive attitude allows for clearer thinking and helps one to access and exploit resources of inner strength.

Effective and creative thinkers are recognised by a developing expertise, both in terms of the skills necessary to tackle problems and by a sound knowledge base within the areas where the challenges occur. Good problem solvers also tend to be motivated primarily by the interest and endeavour inherent in the problems themselves, rather than by external factors such as impressing people, meeting deadlines and targets or (in the ‘world of work’) making money. Having said that, people who are good at solving problems do attract credit, praise and other benefits.

One way of beginning to instil the problem-solving attitude in children (or to strengthen it where it already exists) is through the use of quotes and stories of people who have overcome adversity and found success. These are readily available on the internet and form a useful focal point for lessons/topics in every subject area. Two of my own favourite quotes are:

It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.

Albert Einstein

We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.

John F. Kennedy

(when in 1961 he pledged that America would put a person on the moon by the end of the decade)

BLOCKS ON THINKING

We’ve already touched on some of the characteristics of people who are creative and who display the problem-solving attitude. These amount to ‘specific observable behaviours’ – SOBs – which constitute evidence of effective thinking as robustly as children’s written (or otherwise recorded) outcomes of the challenges they’ve tackled.

By the same token children’s behaviour will also clue us in to what has been called the ‘safeguarding self’. Children who usually do not relish challenge and wish to stay safe when it comes to solving problems will tend to:

• be cautious rather than curious;

• stick to what they know rather than enjoy striking out into new areas;

• rely more on others rather than express independent ideas and views;

• regard mistakes as weaknesses and failures rather than learning opportunities;

• be overly serious rather than excited, playful and determined in the face of problems;

• be rigid and limited in their thinking rather than flexible, exploratory and experimental;

• keep feelings about learning tasks private rather than express aspirations, confusions, difficulties and disappointments.

Teacher task: The ‘problem-solving curriculum’ is more process based than content based. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that curriculum content forms the raw material out of which challenges and problems are constructed (there’s much more on this point throughout the book). As you establish the problem-solving classroom, consider reviewing the behaviour of your children in light of the characteristics noted above.

(You may well find, incidentally, that the safeguarding child is just as likely to be academically very able as not. Sometimes ‘bright’ children seek to maintain their status by sticking to what they know, avoiding risks and relying mainly upon remembered knowledge, i.e. right answers, rather than trying to make fresh connections.)

Of course it is important to structure programmes of work so that children feel they can move away from their comfort zones into areas where the problem-solving attitude has a chance to grow – the so-called ‘stretch zone’ where the conceptual sophistication of information and the difficulty of tasks lies at the edge of children’s current capabilities. Simply put, this means enabling children to move beyond their existing knowledge and understanding.

In creating the bridge between what is familiar and safe, and what is new and more challenging note in yourself and the children commonly recognised blocks on effective thinking. These include:

• an emphasis on the right answer (especially that it should be arrived at quickly);

• an insistence that the rules (in whatever context) should be followed rigidly;

• dismissing out of hand ideas that seem irrational, off the wall etc.;

• avoiding ambiguity and sticking to what is known, established, correct etc.;

• a chronic belief (carried by both teachers and children) that children are not creative;

• a tendency to judge ideas as being odd, foolish, wrong and so on.

Here are some further ideas for cultivating the problem-solving attitude.

• Change unhelpful metaphors. Metaphors reflect the way we perceive reality. If as teachers we talk of a writer’s ‘block’ then children will think of the phenomenon in that way. Children might well feel and act differently if a writer’s block was reframed as a writer’s ‘chance to daydream’.

In this context, ‘blocks’ to thinking could be regarded as ‘opportunities for change’. Similarly in talking of ‘stretch’ zones we evoke the whole physical vocabulary of education, where children are also pushed, pulled, driven, drilled, fighting, running and grouped into ‘cohorts’ (originally a unit of the Roman army). As a thought experiment, consider replacing these terms with the vocabulary of gardening: cultivating, nurturing, tending, flourishing, seeds, fruits, cycles, organic, natural and so on.

• Dedicate some display space to stories of endeavour, enterpreneurship and resilience.

As a writer I’m uplifted by accounts of how famous books were initially rejected. The first Harry Potter novel was turned down 12 times; Zane Grey, writer of Westerns, was told that he had ‘no business being a writer and should give up’ (it is estimated that over 250 million copies of his books are currently in print); Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit was rejected so many times that she decided to self-publish, producing a modest print run of 250 copies that went on eventually to sell over 45 million copies (see www.literaryrejections.com).

Similar examples exist in the world of science. Thomas Edison for instance apparently tested over 6,000 different materials to find a substance suitable for an electric lightbulb. By the time he died in 1931 he had patented nearly 2,000 inventions that he’d created.

• Celebrate what children already do well. Consider inviting children to make presentations of their hobbies and interests to the class. Use these as opportunities to encourage children to listen well, take an interest, ask open questions and connect new ideas and facts to what they already know.

Time and budget permitting, invite professionals from different fields into the school to talk about the passion they have for their chosen careers.

THE THINKING LADDER

In 1956, the educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom and colleagues developed a theory of ‘learning domains’ to help promote higher forms of thinking in education over and above the relatively low order skill of simply remembering facts (rote learning). The three domains are: Cognitive (mental skills), Affective (growth in feelings or emotional areas) and Psychomotor (manual or physical skills).

Bloom’s original categories in the cognitive realm are: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, evaluation and synthesis. These range from relatively simple kinds of thinking that require less understanding to more advanced thinking that demands fuller understanding and manipulation of ideas. In the mid-1990s Lorin Anderson, who was one of Bloom’s students, renamed the categories to reflect the notion that they are essentially active processes rather than just labels. Anderson also argued that ‘creating’ (synthesis) should replace evaluation as the top rung of the ladder. Using the more recent terminology, Bloom’s taxonomy or levels of thinking are shown in Figure 1.1.

In using the taxonomy to structure learning tasks it is worth bearing a few points in mind:

• Although the categories are often thought of as being hierarchical (like a ladder), progress from remembering to creating is not necessarily linear. Also, many tasks and challenges will require children to do several kinds of thinking.

• It is wrong to assume that younger or ‘less able’ children will be unable to engage in more complex kinds of thinking. Although we all learn to think in a more sophisticated way as we mature, even very young children will analyse ideas and make connections between them in their endeavour to make sense of the world.

In this context the educationalist John Abbott has said that young children in particular have ‘the wonderful ability to create naїve theories of everything’. A powerful argument can be made that at its heart education is (or should be) about cultivating that creative energy while enriching the knowledge base and experiences of children so that ultimately they can generate more informed theories of everything – or at least within those areas where their interests and aptitudes lie.

Figure 1.1 Bloom’s taxonomy

Another important point arising from this concerns the notion of originality. An idea that a child has just created (i.e. a new link that she has made between previously separate pieces of information) may be obvious and commonplace to us, but is still original to the child and should be valued as such.

In applying Bloom’s ideas to thinking/problem solving challenges, consider:

• having the taxonomy prominently displayed in the classroom together with the key words that help to define and describe the categories of thinking;

• using these terms as part of the children’s growing ‘vocabulary of thinking’ so that they will increasingly be able to associate the different kinds of thinking with the tasks that you give them (this also helps to reinforce the principle of ‘making the thinking explicit’ as a strategy for developing thinking);

• designing questions that require children to think in the various ways highlighted by Bloom. Make use of the key words in Figure 1.1 to do this;

• emphasising the children’s thinking when you mark their work. This again makes the thinking explicit. One way of doing this is to use images to represent different kinds of thinking: a question mark to represent asking; two question marks facing one another to represent asking a question about a question; a magnifying glass to represent investigating, and so on.

You might consider getting the children to come up with ideas for suitable im...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Jumpstart the problem-solving attitude
• 2 Jumpstart thinking and problem solving in literacy
• 3 Jumpstart thinking and problem solving in science
• 4 Jumpstart thinking and problem solving in philosophy
• 5 Jumpstart thinking and problem solving in emotional resourcefulness
• Bibliography