Puzzling Problems

This year I have the exciting opportunity to work with 1st/2nd graders during their Differentiated Engagement Block (DEB)! I am so excited for this opportunity since throughout my 12 years of teaching I have never had the chance to work with primary aged students.

During this time I work with a small group of students to further develop their higher level thinking skills, such as divergent, convergent, analytical, visual/spatial, creative, and evaluative thinking. Primary Education Thinking Skills (PETS) is the main program that is being implemented, as well as other materials. PETS is a systematized enrichment and diagnostic thinking skills program.  The first 4-6 week session the students have been focusing on convergent thinking. You may ask, What in the world is convergent thinking? Think...Sherlock Holmes. This fictional character used convergent thinking by finding and gathering specific details to logically find the solution to puzzling mysteries. Convergent thinking is problem solving by gathering facts, details, and data to determine the best solution.

Over the past several weeks the students have mainly worked through several logic based problems. In the beginning many of the students would get so excited to answer the question, they quickly learned that attention to detail was key to precision. The students have learned that the puzzles need to be completed in a logical manner. They have realized the clues are interrelated, and all clues must be evaluated carefully.

Many young students can quickly become upset when working on challenging problems, however, I have been blown away by the students' midsets! They have been so encouraging to one another,  and positive while solving the variety of puzzles. There have been many times where it took several tries to arrive at the correct answer, which made many of them even more motivated to solve the problem and feel successful! Below are links to a couple videos where the students are using their deductive thinking skills to work through a puzzle.

Problem Solving Video 1                                Problem Solving Video 2