The second step to solving a problem is planning and executing a strategy. In this step, the student must predict the outcome, choose a familiar approach, and implement that approach systematically to solve the problem. This page includes intervention strategies that you can use to support your students in this area. As you read, consider which of these interventions best aligns with your student's strengths and needs in the whole-learner domains.
Explicit Instruction
If you are intervening to support your students' ability to plan and execute a problem, you should start by explicitly teaching the skill. This sounds like:
Activity A: Teach Story Problem Schematics
If a student understands what the problem is asking, but is having difficulty figuring out how to plan to solve it, you can teach him to diagram the information in the story by creating a schematic. This hand-drawn graphic organizer can help him clarify how quantities in the story are related to one another.
There are many different types of word problems, and each one has a different logic. Forbinger and Fuchs (2014) illustrate how most addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division story problem types can be modeled in terms of part/whole relationships here.
Teach Story Problem Schematics in Action
In the video below, Emily Art explicitly models how to use a graphic organizer to organize known and unknown information in a story problem. She does this to introduce the skill to an intervention student.
As you watch, consider: Why might modeling the information in this way support understanding of the problem?
If your student knows the steps in the problem-solving process but is still having difficulty solving a new problem, you may need to intervene to support his understanding of the range of approaches one might take to solve a problem. When a student encounters a new story type, he may understand the problem but not yet know an appropriate strategy for solving it. A strong problem-solver will begin to model what he does know in an attempt to solve the problem, whereas a weak problem-solver might just give up. You can support a struggling problem-solver's ability to plan and execute a problem by teaching him a series of reliable strategies to choose from when approaching a new problem type (Burns, 2007).
Such strategies might include:
Each of these strategies should be explicitly taught in isolation and practiced with the student. After each strategy is mastered, it should be posted somewhere for easy reference.
Click here for a document that defines and gives examples of attack strategies.
Explicitly Teach a Range of Problem Attack Strategies in Action
Introduce one problem-solving strategy at a time, from most to least concrete. After introducing a new strategy, have the student read the problem, and choose between the attack strategies she knows to identify one that would work best to solve the problem. The following strategy refers to the problem below.
There were some birds on the telephone wire; 3 flew away, and now there are 9 on the wire and 3 on the tree. How many birds were on the wire before any flew away?
Teacher: Now you know three attack strategies: Act It Out, Use Objects, and Draw a Picture. Read the problem. Then, we'll consider the best attack strategy for planning and executing this problem.
Student reads problem.
Teacher: What strategy, out of the ones we've learned (teacher points to Act It Out, Use Objects, and Draw a Picture), would work best here?
Student: I think Draw a Picture because I can see the story in my head, and I think it will help me figure out how many birds were on the wire before.
Activity C: Make a Prediction
Another strategy to use if your student is struggling to understand the story and choose an attack strategy is called Make a Prediction. In this strategy, the student predicts whether the answer is going to be bigger or smaller than one of the numbers in the story and tries to explain why. This type of prediction helps ensure that he has a clear understanding of the action in the story and of the ways that the quantities are related to one another or changing in the story.
Make a Prediction in Action (Model)
In this video, Emily Art explicitly models how to make a prediction to check her understanding of a story. As you watch, consider: How does this intervention help a student plan the best strategy to use to solve a problem?
In this video, the student practices making a prediction so that he can plan the best way to solve the problem. As you watch, consider: What prompts does Emily use to help the student use text evidence to check his prediction?
Think about the following scenario, which takes place after a teacher has explicitly taught a student strategies for planning and executing a problem. This example refers to the following problem.
There were some birds on the telephone wire, 3 flew away, now there are 9 on the wire and 3 on the tree. How many birds were on the wire before any flew away?
Teacher: "How might you solve this problem?"
Student: " I don't know what to do. I give up."
In such a case, what might you do?
When you are planning your lessons, you should anticipate that your student will make errors throughout. Here are a series of prompts that you can use to respond to errors. Keep in mind that all students are different, and that students might respond better to some types of feedback than to others.
| Level of Support | Description of Scaffold | Script |
|---|---|---|
| Smallest Scaffold | Check your Resources. As you continue to use these interventions, your student should have attack strategies listed in his notebook as well as examples of problems that he has already solved. | "Look in your notebook: what other problems are similar to this one? Which strategies have we used to solve problems like these?" |
| Medium Scaffold | Back it Up. If a student is struggling, back up your process. Ask the student to read from the beginning, and identify which information is known, and which is unknown. | "I can see that you are stuck. Let's read to figure out which information is known and which is unknown. This will help us identify a strategy for solving the problem. |
| Highest Scaffold | Model. If the student continues to struggle, model your own thinking. This will help a student understand how to think through the problem to make sure he understands it. | "I can see that you are stuck. Let me show you how I identify the best strategy to solve this problem." |
If your student struggles to meet your objective, there are various techniques that you might try in order to adjust the activity so as best to meet your student's needs.
| Activity | Description of Strategy | Script |
|---|---|---|
| All Activities | Try Different Options. If a student struggles to choose a strategy, offer a few options that you know might work because the student is familiar with them and because they match the problem type. Then, have the student think through how each attack strategy might align/not align with what the problem is asking. | "Let's think about the two strategies Draw a Picture and Use Objects. Which do you think might work better here? Why?" |