Most of the problems used in problems solving have more than one solution. So each of them can be approached in a variety of ways, some of which are sophisticated and some of which are less sophisticated. Hopefully, every child in your class can find one approach that they can use to solve the problems that you present. Over time, and from seeing what other children have done, you should be able to develop and extend the range of strategies that you have at your disposal. So, starting with the members of your own class in mind, problems can be found that can give every child in the class the chance of making some progress toward a solution, either on their own or with the assistance of others in their group. Hence each child can develop from their current knowledge.

Interesting and enjoyable. Problem solving seems to employ problems that are implicitly interesting to children. This is partly because problem solving does not involve a sequence of very similar questions that are designed to practice the same skill. So the novelty of the problems seems to add to their interest.

Many teachers personalise word problems to include characters that the children in the class know. This also makes them more interesting and relevant to the children.

Greater understanding.  In the process of struggling with a problem, children can often obtain a fairly deep understanding of the mathematics surrounding the problem. This understanding is often enhanced, when, in a whole class setting, teachers draw together the various threads from all of the children in the class. (We say more about this in the 'Reporting Back' section of Organising Your Teaching)

Positive attitudes.  Because the children seem to enjoy the problems, and get quite involved with them (we have seen children work through their breaks in order to settle a question that they had been working on), it helps them to gain a positive attitude towards the subject. Some of them have even expressed the opinion that what they were doing was not mathematics and have asked to do more problem solving instead of mathematics! But we want them to see that problem solving is mathematics and that it is an enjoyable subject.

Junior research mathematician. The way that children tackle problems is virtually the same as the way a research mathematician tackles research problems. There is very little difference between a child using the scientific approach to problem solve and a mathematician using it to do research. Hence through problem solving, children get a much better feel for what mathematics is actually about, than they get in the more traditional type of teaching. Hopefully they begin to see that the subject is a live one, get some feeling for the way it is created, and see why certain things are done in certain ways. This then increases their insight into the subject as a whole and gives them a better feeling for what the subject is and what it is trying to do.

Flexibility and creativity. Problem solving provides an opportunity for children to explore ideas and so gives them the chance to extend their creativity. Children are continually coming up with ways of tackling problems that we hadn’t thought of before. The interesting thing is that the children who are producing these ideas are not always the ones who we generally think of as being good at mathematics. Even relatively weak children may have ideas that turn out to be fruitful. Sometimes though, it can take a little work on the your part before the consequences of some ideas are seen.

General problem solving. It is important to point out at this stage, that though we are concentrating here on mathematical problem solving, many of the strategies and techniques that are used in mathematics are used in any type of problem. The four stages of problem solving due to Pólya (in What is Problem Solving?) are quite general steps that can be applied to any problem whether mathematical or not!

Cooperative skills. Traditionally, mathematics has been taught to individuals working by themselves. Very little encouragement has been given to cooperation in the traditional didactic approach to teaching mathematics. There has not been the emphasis on children working together that there has been in other curriculum areas. But working in cooperative groups does seem to have advantages. Somehow, talking mathematics out loud appears to help learning and understanding, and it also seems to help many children produce original ideas. So emphasising group work in problem solving appears to increase enjoyment, learning and social skills such as communication.

To practice skills. Some teachers use problems to reinforce technical skills that may have been taught in other ways. Certain problems are chosen because they will use certain algorithmic skills. The divide by 2 or multiply by three and add 1 problem (in What Is Problem Solving?) is an example of this. To get any feel for this problem you have to do quite a bit of arithmetic. If you want to practice the 5 times table, then do the extension where the 3 is changed to a 5. This problem then gives some point to multiplication. Hopefully after doing lots of examples the children will start to see some patterns.  We have also mentioned the practising of skills under the stratgey Think.  By choosing problems of this type the children have an opportunity to work on basic skills in an interesting situation.

The second concern that teachers express, is the worry that children will come up with ideas that they won’t understand. In a way this shouldn’t happen. In problem solving we expect children to be able to explain their methods. So you should be able to understand most of the ideas and solutions children produce because the children should be able to explain them. However, you can’t be expected to know everything about everything. So you shouldn’t feel embarrassed if you are not sure if the child’s idea is a good one or not. There is nothing wrong with you telling a child, class or group that you are not sure but will try to find out. Often things can be resolved by a quiet moment with a coffee, a paper and pencil or with a chat to colleagues in the staff room. If that doesn’t work, then try our Questions and Answers facility.

Naturally one wouldn’t want to be in this situation too often. However, as time goes by the answers to these unexpected ideas will mount, as will your strategies for dealing with them.

Student insecurity. This may occur because the children have never met open-ended problems before. Some teachers in mathematics have traditionally given children algorithms to practice and copy. It is not surprising that in more open problem solving situations, some children will feel insecure. However, by careful handling and by introducing things gradually, children should be able to overcome their initial insecurity.

Curriculum constraints. Many teachers, especially initially, feel that problem solving takes a considerable amount of time. Hence they are concerned that parts of the mathematics curriculum at a given Level, will need to be omitted. Our experience is that teaching problem solving is time consuming initially. It does seem to take a while for both teachers and children to get the feel of how it works. But after this initial period, time can be actually gained. Many teachers who we have worked with have told us that, by using problem solving, they have been able to cover the material more quickly than in previous years. They put this down partly to the fact that the children were looking for, and seeing, patterns everywhere. This enabled the teachers to cover ideas more quickly. It was also partly due to the fact that children were coming up with ideas that were the foundations of later topics in the curriculum. These two things appeared to be speeding up children’s learning.

There does seem to be another factor though. The time that children spend on problem solving seems to help them to come to grips with a topic - to own it. This produces greater understanding and provides a solid base for later learning.

Low ability students. There is some feeling that it is all right to undertake problem solving with bright children but it is of little value for lower ability children. Admittedly we have no research evidence ourselves in this area, at least, not in primary schools. However, we do have the example of a lower ability fourth form class that made significant gains in mathematics after having problem solving lessons once a week for two terms. These gains were across the curriculum and were not just confined to problem solving. Hence we would suggest that such gains might also be possible for mathematically weaker primary school children.

But there is an issue regarding both children who are not good readers and ESOL children. Clearly these children may not be able to read the problem. Because it is the mathematics that is important, lack of reading ability should not be a barrier to these children.

All children will need to read the problem more than once. If you are starting children off with a problem from a whole class setting, then it will almost certainly be read more than once. You can assess whether or not all children have understood the problem by asking them to restate it in their own words. As you go around from group to group, you can also check that every child is working on the problem that you actually posed. With New Entrants children, you will probably do most of your problem solving starting in a whole class situation.

Things are a little more difficult if you plan to give the students the problem in written form to work on, without any prior whole class discussion. One way round this is to give children an audiotaped version of the problem. This should help those who are poorer readers and it might also help the ESOL students. If there are still difficulties, then think how you cope with these children in other areas of the curriculum and use those strategies in problem solving too.