Problem Solving Strategies

In giving a second presentation on problem solving at my kid’s elementary school, I found myself trying to categorize tools for solving a problem. There are formal systems out there see the Wikipedia page but I was trying to teach this to 8-11 year olds, and so I came up with something simpler. For them, my key lesson is still that if you get stuck, there are other things to try. When’s the last time you said to yourself “hmm, critical thinking didn’t work, so maybe I should try morphological analysis instead?”

To get the ideas across, I gave them those little brain-teaser metal puzzles. We started by talking about how there are different skills and knowledge you might need to solve a problem. I had hoped they would generally have enough time to solve at least a couple puzzles and start to learn the pattern (spoiler alert, usually the trick is to line up the gaps / narrow parts on two pieces with each other). I asked them to not only solve the puzzles, but also to think about what approaches they tried to solve the problem.

I then suggested categories of skills for solving problems:

• Analyze – you can look at the problem and try to understand it. The kids gave examples of staring at the puzzle, noticing patterns, and other ways where they really tried to understand the problem.

• Experiment – you can try stuff and see if it works. First, I learned a room full of kids playing with metal brainteasers is noisy. But second, some of them tried things like shaking the puzzle, just seeing what would fit, pulling, twisting, and generally just testing what seemed to work.

• Get a new perspective – If one way of looking at things isn’t working, try something else. This is the trick I use to find missing items when everyone else has given up. I assume if no one found it first, I should try the first thing no one would think of and see if that’s the answer. The kids mostly mentioned getting help as an example in this category.

• Try different things – I don’t really count this one as a category itself, but it’s more emphasis on the previous category. The “new” is the key word because if you’ve already tried something, it probably won’t work differently the next time… Unless you have a different take on trying that same thing. (Note, occasionally I forget to try the obvious thing when my perspective changes, because I tried it before. And then it turns out the obvious thing is the answer)

After the presentation me and my sponsor discussed how it went. This is an experiment, and so we don’t really know if it will “work” or what it would mean if it did. Her hope is that this kind of lesson will help students remember the different tools they have when they do get stuck in the moment. I opened the lesson by explaining my view that while some problems are easy, most are not. And so, if you’re doing something that’s hard, you should expect to get it wrong some of the time.

What do you think, are there any other super-categories I should include next time?