If you are a teacher reading this, I know you are already doing a great job at helping children learn and develop this important life skill (parents too!). However, I have tried to think of the magic formula for any educator to consider when creating a classroom of resilient problem solvers. Hopefully by the end of this post, you can recognise how much good you are already doing in your classrooms, but also picked up some new tips. So without further ado… let’s get started!
Blog Post Objective: Help children become resilient problem solvers.
Definition: Resilient problem solvers are people who can face challenges calmly, think through possible solutions, and keep trying even when things are difficult. They don’t give up easily, learn from mistakes, and adapt when their first idea doesn’t work.
Scenario 1: ‘Teacher, teacher I don’t know what to do!’.
So, one of my pet peeves when teaching is how quickly and often this phrase gets thrown around. Even when you are just on the verge of explaining what to do.. or even worse… after you have spent a lengthy amount of time preparing and explaining an activity that is well within their range of ability. AGHHHH!
So, what exactly is happening here? I think it’s a little bit of a bad habit, a little bit of a fear of failure and a little bit of laziness. Sidenote: poor listening skills or not paying attention and getting distracted can also be at play here, but for the purpose of this article I am solely focusing on the resilient problem solving.
How I like to handle this is to follow these steps:
1. Check for understanding. As I am explaining a task/activity/instruction, I make sure to check for understanding. I give explicit and clear steps. I get them to chant back to me what to do first, second, third etc.
2. Explicitly teach working routine. I try to make sure I pre – teach what my expectations are for their approach to learning at the beginning of the year/unit/lesson. An example would be independent work. I explain exactly what I expect them to do when working independently and I remind them of this every day, if not every lesson. For example; I listen carefully to the instructions. If I am not sure what to do, I must try by myself first. I will read the directions by myself and highlight the important words. I will check to see if there is an example. I can ask a friend for help. If I am still not sure, then I can ask my teacher by raising my hand. This of course can be adapted to suit the age group. For younger learners, I would break it down even further; I will start straight away, I will stay in my seat the whole time. I will put my hand in the air to ask a question. When I am finished, I… You get the idea.
3. Consistency. Full disclosure – being consistent is one of my biggest teaching weaknesses. I always set out to be super strict about the expectations and routines, but I can’t help but fall into the trap of responding to all these ‘help me’ requests. In the moment, it feels like I am doing the right thing by helping the children on demand, but when I take a step back I can see that I am not really helping them in the long run. They are also falling into the pattern of seeking help before attempting something by themselves which is not good. Try your best to BE CONSISTENT. Especially in the first month of school, do not give them an inch. If they ask for your help, after you have explained the instructions AND your expectations… leave them to figure it out. They will soon learn that they have to be actively listening and figure it out independently. There is no need to get angry and frustrated and engage in a battle of ‘how do you not know what to do after I explained it THREE TIMES’. It’s not worth getting worked up over. Just calmly remind them of your expectations and walk away. This also helps with the daydreamers – they will start to recognise that they need to tune in for your instructions or they get left behind.
Disclaimer: Make sure they can actually do what you want them to do – within reason. If I am introducing long division for the first time, and I know that certain students struggle with Maths, and can just about do basic division… of course I should expect that they will feel out of their depth and will ask for help. So my first day of long division, will be a guided step by step approach with plenty of concrete materials and visual supports. Some whole class work, some paired/group work and minimal independent work. Maybe one or two sums by themselves.
4. Praise independent work: I find it really beneficial to recognise when the children do a good job at working independently and figuring something out by themselves – or at least try to before asking for help. I will definitely call it out in front of the class and be really specific what they did well. ‘I really like that Sarah came back to the classroom after her music lesson, and started her work straight away. She read the directions on the board and understood what to do all by herself. She made sure not to disturb anybody and tried her best to finish her work quickly’. I might also send a note/email home to let the child’s parents know about it too.
Scenario 2: ‘Teacher, teacher there’s not enough glue sticks left!’.
Ugh. Just ugh on so many levels. Firstly, one of the reasons why we have no glue sticks left is because… ‘YOU ALL KEEPING FORGETTING TO PUT THE LIDS BACK ON LIKE I HAVE TOLD YOU A MILLION TIMES’.
So this scenario is just a general and classic classroom dilemma. Happens every year and can be adjusted to a range of simple and equally frustrating situations – markers wasted, over flowing bins, no toilet paper left, laptop not charged, library book torn bla, bla and more bla.
I like to use my trusty stop sign and: PAUSE for Problem Solving.
Basically, I print out a large stop sign and stick it on a stick of some sort. Any time that one of these classic classroom dilemmas rears their irritating heads, I hold up the stop sign and call out for everyone to stop what they are doing and ‘pause for problem solving’. We all stop on the spot, and have a group brainstorm and it looks something like this:
Teacher: ‘Oh no, Sarah just noticed that there are no more glue sticks left. What should we do? Does anyone have an idea?’
Child 1: ‘We can go to the office and get more!’
Teacher: ‘That is a great idea but we only have 15 minutes to do this activity and going to the office takes about 10 minutes. What else could we do?’
Child 2: ‘We can share!’
Teacher: ‘Yes, I like that idea. We have 13 glue sticks and 24 children. How can we share?’
…and so on and so on. It’s nothing special but it just helps me turn these situations into teachable moments and hopefully highlight the brainstorming process of solving a problem. It could work even better if you devoted a wall or bulletin board to these types of simple problem solving brainstorms. As these dilemmas occur throughout the year, you can add the solutions to the wall so that the children can be reminded of what they can do. My goal is that the children learn how to solve these problems by themselves, so the next time there is not enough glues, they manage to figure it out by themselves. Maybe wishful thinking but maybe not. Once again, the goal is to explicitly teach the skill and put a system in place to set them up for success.
Scenario 3: ‘That’s not fair! I’m never playing again!’
To be fair, I really understand this one. Of course, it’s frustrating if you’re playing a game, and the person you are playing with keeps trying to cheat on the sly. It’s frustrating for everyone – not just children. So, how can we help them face this type of situation head on with calmness and a positive and resilient mindset? With great difficulty actually. If you have any tips let me know!
For this scenario, I am talking about an argument stemming from a turn – taking game, but it can be applied to any sort of inter – personal clash. I am not focusing on the child that is playing unfairly but of course they should also be spoken to.
Firstly, let’s assume you have a well established behaviour policy set in place and the children have a good understanding of acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. Let’s also assume that you are teaching a social/emotional based subject each week. In Ireland, we call it SPHE. In the UK, it is called PSHE. These subjects teach children essential life skills—like emotional wellbeing, relationships, safety, and making healthy choice.
Then, let’s consider the following:
In the moment: