Developing Independent
Problem-Solving Skills at
Key Stage One
Moredon Primary and Nursery School
Rodbourne Cheney Primary School
Wroughton Infants School
Ice Breaker Problem
On your table, shake hands with each other
once. How many handshakes are there
altogether?
If everyone in the room shakes hand with
each other once, how many handshakes
would there be altogether?
Handshakes feedback
• Did you get an answer?
• How confident are you with your answer?
• What strategies did you use?
The background to our project
The session will look at research done by 3 schools into developing
an independent approach to problem-solving through the teaching of
heuristics to Year 2 pupils. Delegates will see how the children
responded at the beginning, middle and end of the project and the
impact of teaching them how to solve problems for themselves
through a range of strategies.
The first problem
We devised a problem for a Year 2 class
from each school – each class had the
same problem.
No teaching was done before the problems
were given out.
The children were put into mixed ability
groups of 3.
You have three ice cream flavours:
Chocolate
Apple
Strawberry
And you have a triple cornet.
How many different ways can you order the flavours in your
cornet?
• These videos showed the children struggling to
cope with this task.
• A 13 second ‘tumbleweed’ moment was noted
before the first child (A BA child) spoke.
• They spent too much of their time writing out
their answers in sentences, then editing them.
• Children were not really working as a team –
they tended to do their bit then pass the problem
on to someone else.
• Equipment was provided but not used.
After having a go…
• We praised the children for trying 100%
with their problems.
• We then let them watch their own videos
along with the videos from other schools.
This enabled them to realise that everyone
had the same word problem and had
similar difficulties in tackling them.
The next step…
• All the teachers met to watch, share and
discuss the videos.
• We then identified the AT1 levels that they
were working and the main difficulties that
they faced.
• Then we identified three heuristics to
teach before doing the problem again.
The Three Heuristics
• Work together and share ideas
• Use tables to organise workings
• Use diagrams or pictures
We then gave them the same problem again
and the following videos shows the progress
that they made. Again, no help was given
during the task.
• These videos showed a marked improvement in
the children’s ability and confidence to solve
these word problems.
• Equipment were used.
• Children talked a lot more.
• They were all doing something as part of a
team.
• The ‘Literacy’ focus was removed and they were
using symbols or colours.
• Tables were drawn to improve the layout.
• They checked their results more this time.
So what other heuristics can be
taught?
•
•
•
•
•
•
Have you seen a similar problem before?
Try and be systematic
Guess and improve
Try extreme cases - start small or large
Have you tried all the possibilities?
Use equipment provided
Will you use any of these for your next activity?
Our final step…
In order to take their learning and
confidence forward, we met again and
decided on the following heuristics to teach:
• Be systematic
• It’s OK to use equipment
The children were given a different problem
to solve.
An alien has just arrived on planet Earth and
would like to buy a Mars Bar costing 30p.
He has lots of 2p,
5p,
10p and 20p coins.
How many different ways can he pay 30p
using the coins?
An pirate has just arrived on an island and would
like to buy a parrot costing 30p.
He has lots of 2p,
5p,
10p and 20p coins.
How many different ways can he pay 30p
using the coins?
Rounding up…
Benefits from this project:
• Children are now more confident in being
able to tackle a problem, not just in
Numeracy.
• They are now more aware of the heuristics
they could apply to help with solving
problems.
So what do the children have to say about this?