how to use creative problem solving in the classroom

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Problem-solving skills are necessary in all areas of life, and classroom problem solving activities can be a great way to get students prepped and ready to solve real problems in real life scenarios. Whether in school, work or in their social relationships, the ability to critically analyze a problem, map out all its elements and then prepare a workable solution is one of the most valuable skills one can acquire in life.

Educating your students about problem solving skills from an early age in school can be facilitated through classroom problem solving activities. Such endeavors encourage cognitive as well as social development, and can equip students with the tools they’ll need to address and solve problems throughout the rest of their lives. Here are five classroom problem solving activities your students are sure to benefit from as well as enjoy doing:

1. Brainstorm bonanza

Having your students create lists related to whatever you are currently studying can be a great way to help them to enrich their understanding of a topic while learning to problem-solve. For example, if you are studying a historical, current or fictional event that did not turn out favorably, have your students brainstorm ways that the protagonist or participants could have created a different, more positive outcome. They can brainstorm on paper individually or on a chalkboard or white board in front of the class.

2. Problem-solving as a group

Have your students create and decorate a medium-sized box with a slot in the top. Label the box “The Problem-Solving Box.” Invite students to anonymously write down and submit any problem or issue they might be having at school or at home, ones that they can’t seem to figure out on their own. Once or twice a week, have a student draw one of the items from the box and read it aloud. Then have the class as a group figure out the ideal way the student can address the issue and hopefully solve it.

3. Clue me in

This fun detective game encourages problem-solving, critical thinking and cognitive development. Collect a number of items that are associated with a specific profession, social trend, place, public figure, historical event, animal, etc. Assemble actual items (or pictures of items) that are commonly associated with the target answer. Place them all in a bag (five-10 clues should be sufficient.) Then have a student reach into the bag and one by one pull out clues. Choose a minimum number of clues they must draw out before making their first guess (two- three). After this, the student must venture a guess after each clue pulled until they guess correctly. See how quickly the student is able to solve the riddle.

4. Survivor scenarios

Create a pretend scenario for students that requires them to think creatively to make it through. An example might be getting stranded on an island, knowing that help will not arrive for three days. The group has a limited amount of food and water and must create shelter from items around the island. Encourage working together as a group and hearing out every child that has an idea about how to make it through the three days as safely and comfortably as possible.

5. Moral dilemma

Create a number of possible moral dilemmas your students might encounter in life, write them down, and place each item folded up in a bowl or bag. Some of the items might include things like, “I saw a good friend of mine shoplifting. What should I do?” or “The cashier gave me an extra $1.50 in change after I bought candy at the store. What should I do?” Have each student draw an item from the bag one by one, read it aloud, then tell the class their answer on the spot as to how they would handle the situation.

Classroom problem solving activities need not be dull and routine. Ideally, the problem solving activities you give your students will engage their senses and be genuinely fun to do. The activities and lessons learned will leave an impression on each child, increasing the likelihood that they will take the lesson forward into their everyday lives.

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Developing Problem-Solving Skills for Kids | Strategies & Tips

We've made teaching problem-solving skills for kids a whole lot easier! Keep reading and comment below with any other tips you have for your classroom!

Problem-Solving Skills for Kids: The Real Deal

Picture this: You've carefully created an assignment for your class. The step-by-step instructions are crystal clear. During class time, you walk through all the directions, and the response is awesome. Your students are ready! It's finally time for them to start working individually and then... 8 hands shoot up with questions. You hear one student mumble in the distance, "Wait, I don't get this" followed by the dreaded, "What are we supposed to be doing again?"

When I was a new computer science teacher, I would have this exact situation happen. As a result, I would end up scrambling to help each individual student with their problems until half the class period was eaten up. I assumed that in order for my students to learn best, I needed to be there to help answer questions immediately so they could move forward and complete the assignment.

Here's what I wish I had known when I started teaching coding to elementary students - the process of grappling with an assignment's content can be more important than completing the assignment's product. That said, not every student knows how to grapple, or struggle, in order to get to the "aha!" moment and solve a problem independently. The good news is, the ability to creatively solve problems is not a fixed skill. It can be learned by students, nurtured by teachers, and practiced by everyone!

Your students are absolutely capable of navigating and solving problems on their own. Here are some strategies, tips, and resources that can help:

Problem-Solving Skills for Kids: Student Strategies

These are strategies your students can use during independent work time to become creative problem solvers.

1. Go Step-By-Step Through The Problem-Solving Sequence 

Post problem-solving anchor charts and references on your classroom wall or pin them to your Google Classroom - anything to make them accessible to students. When they ask for help, invite them to reference the charts first.

2. Revisit Past Problems

If a student gets stuck, they should ask themself, "Have I ever seen a problem like this before? If so, how did I solve it?" Chances are, your students have tackled something similar already and can recycle the same strategies they used before to solve the problem this time around.

3. Document What Doesn’t Work

Sometimes finding the answer to a problem requires the process of elimination. Have your students attempt to solve a problem at least two different ways before reaching out to you for help. Even better, encourage them write down their "Not-The-Answers" so you can see their thought process when you do step in to support. Cool thing is, you likely won't need to! By attempting to solve a problem in multiple different ways, students will often come across the answer on their own.

4. "3 Before Me"

Let's say your students have gone through the Problem Solving Process, revisited past problems, and documented what doesn't work. Now, they know it's time to ask someone for help. Great! But before you jump into save the day, practice "3 Before Me". This means students need to ask 3 other classmates their question before asking the teacher. By doing this, students practice helpful 21st century skills like collaboration and communication, and can usually find the info they're looking for on the way.

Problem-Solving Skills for Kids: Teacher Tips

These are tips that you, the teacher, can use to support students in developing creative problem-solving skills for kids.

1. Ask Open Ended Questions

When a student asks for help, it can be tempting to give them the answer they're looking for so you can both move on. But what this actually does is prevent the student from developing the skills needed to solve the problem on their own. Instead of giving answers, try using open-ended questions and prompts. Here are some examples:

2. Encourage Grappling

Grappling  is everything a student might do when faced with a problem that does not have a clear solution. As explained in this article from Edutopia , this doesn't just mean perseverance! Grappling is more than that - it includes critical thinking, asking questions, observing evidence, asking more questions, forming hypotheses, and constructing a deep understanding of an issue.

There are lots of ways to provide opportunities for grappling. Anything that includes the Engineering Design Process is a good one! Examples include:

• Engineering or Art Projects
• Design-thinking challenges
• Computer science projects
• Science experiments

3. Emphasize Process Over Product

For elementary students, reflecting on the process of solving a problem helps them develop a growth mindset . Getting an answer "wrong" doesn't need to be a bad thing! What matters most are the steps they took to get there and how they might change their approach next time. As a teacher, you can support students in learning this reflection process.

4. Model The Strategies Yourself! 

As creative problem-solving skills for kids are being learned, there will likely be moments where they are frustrated or unsure. Here are some easy ways you can model what creative problem-solving looks and sounds like.

• Ask clarifying questions if you don't understand something
• Admit when don't know the correct answer
• Talk through multiple possible outcomes for different situations 
• Verbalize how you’re feeling when you find a problem

Practicing these strategies with your students will help create a learning environment where grappling, failing, and growing is celebrated!

Problem-Solving Skill for Kids

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3 steps to creative problem solving in the classroom

• Teaching Strategies

Bringing creativity into the classroom came naturally to Mark Gura. He began his career as a visual arts teacher in East Harlem, and when his small school asked him to teach other topics like English and social studies, it made sense to integrate some of his artistic skills into his lessons.

“Running a creative classroom was all about the culture I established,” Gura says. “I was bringing the students into another way of being. Not of thinking, but of being.”

To do that requires restructuring “habits of mind,” as Gura puts it. For example, many people think of creativity as a solo endeavor – the artist or writer who paints or writes in solitude. But creativity doesn’t happen in a bubble. Often it’s the result of team collaboration with a lot of brainstorming and bouncing ideas off each other.

How can educators best build a creative culture in their classroom? It begins with establishing a creative space where students can share their work. Gura is a fan of blogs, where students can post essays, videos or visual art projects and get real-time feedback.

Educators can also encourage students to come up with multiple solutions to specific situations. Too often, Gura says, students get caught up with finding the single correct answer to a problem. Instead, focus on finding multiple outcomes. Here’s how:

• Develop a strategy. This involves researching the problem and its history to best understand it and then analyzing how others approached the problem and solved it. Look for mistakes made along the way and the gaps left to be filled.
• Create a prototype, test or draft. Once students truly understand the problem, they are ready to solve it. This is where the creative community truly comes into play. Through collaboration, more minds are working on prototype solutions. Not only can students tap into their peers’ ideas, the feedback turns the classroom into a thought incubator where ideas are nurtured and grow.
• Find an audience. Creative communities need a support system, someone outside of the creative team who can bring an unbiased perspective to the problem and solution. This can be done by soliciting feedback through blog posts, in a closed digital community or during classroom presentations. The idea is to use the audience to help refine the prototype or draft.

In creative classrooms, Gura says, the finished product isn’t the most important outcome. It’s the process of getting to a solution and then expanding it in new directions.

“That’s a huge shift in the habits of mind within the classroom,” he adds. “It’s ongoing, with students relying on the community for support.”

Discover ready-to-implement activities for developing student creativity in your school or classroom with Gura’s new book, Make, Learn Succeed: Building a Culture of Creativity in Your School.

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5 Educators on Teaching Creative Problem-Solving in the Classroom

Artwork by Monica Acedo .

As educators work to prepare their students for the careers of the future, it’s not just about learning the facts anymore. Students need hands-on experience tackling tough problems in creative ways. For teachers, this means adjusting teaching methods , and stepping back to let students take control.

We talked to five pioneering educators at SXSW EDU about how they teach the skills for creative problem-solving. They shared strategies and insights and told us why this new model for teaching matters so much right now.

Dan Ryder is an English teacher and improv coach at Mt. Blue High School in Farmington, Maine. He uses a design-thinking mindset in the classroom, and challenges students to find solutions and figure out what happened when things went wrong.

Hadley Ferguson is the executive director of the EdCamp.org Foundation. She told us that creative problem-solving starts by stepping out of hierarchical thinking. It’s all about creating an environment where students work together, everybody’s voice is welcome, and it’s OK to make mistakes.

Kerry Gallagher is a digital learning specialist at St. John’s Prep in Danvers, Massachusetts. She explained how teaching creative problem-solving skills helps students build a foundation for inspiring, engaging careers.

Manuel Herrera is the 1:1 coordinator and design space facilitator for Affton schools in St. Louis, Missouri. According to Manuel, teaching creative problem-solving means helping students see all the elements of a problem. In Manuel’s model, teachers step back as students work together and learn to take control.

Rich Lombardo is an ed tech at Eanes ISD. For Rich, teaching creative problem-solving is about allowing students to have a voice in their projects. Teachers become the facilitators.

For more on how teachers see the future of education and how they’re bringing that future to the classroom now, check out our Back to School collection .

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Teaching problem solving.

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Tips and Techniques

Expert vs. novice problem solvers, communicate.

• Have students  identify specific problems, difficulties, or confusions . Don’t waste time working through problems that students already understand.
• If students are unable to articulate their concerns, determine where they are having trouble by  asking them to identify the specific concepts or principles associated with the problem.
• In a one-on-one tutoring session, ask the student to  work his/her problem out loud . This slows down the thinking process, making it more accurate and allowing you to access understanding.
• When working with larger groups you can ask students to provide a written “two-column solution.” Have students write up their solution to a problem by putting all their calculations in one column and all of their reasoning (in complete sentences) in the other column. This helps them to think critically about their own problem solving and helps you to more easily identify where they may be having problems. Two-Column Solution (Math) Two-Column Solution (Physics)

Encourage Independence

• Model the problem solving process rather than just giving students the answer. As you work through the problem, consider how a novice might struggle with the concepts and make your thinking clear
• Have students work through problems on their own. Ask directing questions or give helpful suggestions, but  provide only minimal assistance and only when needed to overcome obstacles.
• Don’t fear  group work ! Students can frequently help each other, and talking about a problem helps them think more critically about the steps needed to solve the problem. Additionally, group work helps students realize that problems often have multiple solution strategies, some that might be more effective than others

Be sensitive

• Frequently, when working problems, students are unsure of themselves. This lack of confidence may hamper their learning. It is important to recognize this when students come to us for help, and to give each student some feeling of mastery. Do this by providing  positive reinforcement to let students know when they have mastered a new concept or skill.

Encourage Thoroughness and Patience

• Try to communicate that  the process is more important than the answer so that the student learns that it is OK to not have an instant solution. This is learned through your acceptance of his/her pace of doing things, through your refusal to let anxiety pressure you into giving the right answer, and through your example of problem solving through a step-by step process.

Experts (teachers) in a particular field are often so fluent in solving problems from that field that they can find it difficult to articulate the problem solving principles and strategies they use to novices (students) in their field because these principles and strategies are second nature to the expert. To teach students problem solving skills,  a teacher should be aware of principles and strategies of good problem solving in his or her discipline .

The mathematician George Polya captured the problem solving principles and strategies he used in his discipline in the book  How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method (Princeton University Press, 1957). The book includes  a summary of Polya’s problem solving heuristic as well as advice on the teaching of problem solving.

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Teaching creative problem solving

Jul 31, 2017 | Teaching , Pupils | 0 |

Teaching facts and concepts could be said to be relatively easy when compared to helping pupils to develop skillsets such a critical thinking and creative problem solving.

Students must be nurtured to become independent learners – capable and able to solve any given problem or obstacle placed before them.

Two sides of the same coin?

Problem solving and critical thinking are intrinsically linked with one another, as each involves the same process that must be followed in order to reach a successful conclusion. This process runs as follows:

• Identify an objective
• Conduct research
• Generate ideas
• Develop solutions
• Check whether or not the solutions are appropriate

While creative problem solving (according to MindTools) specifically involves:

• Balanced divergent and convergent thinking
• Problems posed as questions
• Judgement that is deferred or suspended
• Focus on “Yes, and,” instead of “No, but.”

You can learn more about the MindTools method and their creative problem-solving learning tools over on their blog: Creative Problem Solving – Finding Innovative Solutions to Challenges .

So, how can these problem-solving processes be guided within the classroom?

Encourage independence

Try to refrain from providing tips or hinting at what may led to the answer. Instead you should map out and guide the problem-solving process – encouraging your pupils by asking questions to help them grasp the concept and explore the problem.

Whilst creative problem solving is a skill effectively learnt when a student works alone, group work is not to be underestimated, as talking through problems with peers can develop critical thinking and help pupils in understanding the problem-solving model.

Confidence is the key to creative problem solving

The biggest barrier to resolving a problem and overcoming a challenge is an innate fear of failure and a reluctance to try out various solutions.

Teachers should, where necessary, offer guidance during the problem solving process. Positive reinforcement when students are working successfully towards a solution, and using questioning to gently nudge them onto the right track when it becomes apparent that their current process is not working.

Use open questions (beginning with  how, why, where, what, who, when ) to encourage thinking through problems and to bring students into the discussion.

I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who. The Elephant's Child, Kipling

Create a healthy environment for open communication

Encourage pupils to spot specific sub-problems, as well as identify the hurdles that will need to be overcome.

Ask them to break down the entire problem into smaller tasks and then create a dependency chart to map them into a structure that will eventually lead to them to a final solution.

Creative problem solving is a process of continual testing and advancement, not intuitive leaps of logic.  By breaking down a problem into its constituent parts at the beginning of the lesson, you avoid pupils wasting too much time on a problem when they’re yet to fully understand it.

Emphasise that it is the process of problem solving that is important to perfect rather than the end goal of discovering the answer.

This can help put pupils at ease and ensure that they aren’t watching the clock nor competing against one another to find the only ‘correct’ solution.

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Teaching Problem-Solving Skills

Many instructors design opportunities for students to solve “problems”. But are their students solving true problems or merely participating in practice exercises? The former stresses critical thinking and decision­ making skills whereas the latter requires only the application of previously learned procedures.

Problem solving is often broadly defined as "the ability to understand the environment, identify complex problems, review related information to develop, evaluate strategies and implement solutions to build the desired outcome" (Fissore, C. et al, 2021). True problem solving is the process of applying a method – not known in advance – to a problem that is subject to a specific set of conditions and that the problem solver has not seen before, in order to obtain a satisfactory solution.

Below you will find some basic principles for teaching problem solving and one model to implement in your classroom teaching.

Principles for teaching problem solving

• Model a useful problem-solving method . Problem solving can be difficult and sometimes tedious. Show students how to be patient and persistent, and how to follow a structured method, such as Woods’ model described below. Articulate your method as you use it so students see the connections.
• Teach within a specific context . Teach problem-solving skills in the context in which they will be used by students (e.g., mole fraction calculations in a chemistry course). Use real-life problems in explanations, examples, and exams. Do not teach problem solving as an independent, abstract skill.
• Help students understand the problem . In order to solve problems, students need to define the end goal. This step is crucial to successful learning of problem-solving skills. If you succeed at helping students answer the questions “what?” and “why?”, finding the answer to “how?” will be easier.
• Take enough time . When planning a lecture/tutorial, budget enough time for: understanding the problem and defining the goal (both individually and as a class); dealing with questions from you and your students; making, finding, and fixing mistakes; and solving entire problems in a single session.
• Ask questions and make suggestions . Ask students to predict “what would happen if …” or explain why something happened. This will help them to develop analytical and deductive thinking skills. Also, ask questions and make suggestions about strategies to encourage students to reflect on the problem-solving strategies that they use.
• Link errors to misconceptions . Use errors as evidence of misconceptions, not carelessness or random guessing. Make an effort to isolate the misconception and correct it, then teach students to do this by themselves. We can all learn from mistakes.

Woods’ problem-solving model

Define the problem.

• The system . Have students identify the system under study (e.g., a metal bridge subject to certain forces) by interpreting the information provided in the problem statement. Drawing a diagram is a great way to do this.
• Known(s) and concepts . List what is known about the problem, and identify the knowledge needed to understand (and eventually) solve it.
• Unknown(s) . Once you have a list of knowns, identifying the unknown(s) becomes simpler. One unknown is generally the answer to the problem, but there may be other unknowns. Be sure that students understand what they are expected to find.
• Units and symbols . One key aspect in problem solving is teaching students how to select, interpret, and use units and symbols. Emphasize the use of units whenever applicable. Develop a habit of using appropriate units and symbols yourself at all times.
• Constraints . All problems have some stated or implied constraints. Teach students to look for the words "only", "must", "neglect", or "assume" to help identify the constraints.
• Criteria for success . Help students consider, from the beginning, what a logical type of answer would be. What characteristics will it possess? For example, a quantitative problem will require an answer in some form of numerical units (e.g., $/kg product, square cm, etc.) while an optimization problem requires an answer in the form of either a numerical maximum or minimum.

Think about it

• “Let it simmer”.  Use this stage to ponder the problem. Ideally, students will develop a mental image of the problem at hand during this stage.
• Identify specific pieces of knowledge . Students need to determine by themselves the required background knowledge from illustrations, examples and problems covered in the course.
• Collect information . Encourage students to collect pertinent information such as conversion factors, constants, and tables needed to solve the problem.

Plan a solution

• Consider possible strategies . Often, the type of solution will be determined by the type of problem. Some common problem-solving strategies are: compute; simplify; use an equation; make a model, diagram, table, or chart; or work backwards.
• Choose the best strategy . Help students to choose the best strategy by reminding them again what they are required to find or calculate.

Carry out the plan

• Be patient . Most problems are not solved quickly or on the first attempt. In other cases, executing the solution may be the easiest step.
• Be persistent . If a plan does not work immediately, do not let students get discouraged. Encourage them to try a different strategy and keep trying.

Encourage students to reflect. Once a solution has been reached, students should ask themselves the following questions:

• Does the answer make sense?
• Does it fit with the criteria established in step 1?
• Did I answer the question(s)?
• What did I learn by doing this?
• Could I have done the problem another way?

If you would like support applying these tips to your own teaching, CTE staff members are here to help.  View the  CTE Support  page to find the most relevant staff member to contact. 

• Fissore, C., Marchisio, M., Roman, F., & Sacchet, M. (2021). Development of problem solving skills with Maple in higher education. In: Corless, R.M., Gerhard, J., Kotsireas, I.S. (eds) Maple in Mathematics Education and Research. MC 2020. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1414. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81698-8_15
• Foshay, R., & Kirkley, J. (1998). Principles for Teaching Problem Solving. TRO Learning Inc., Edina MN.  (PDF) Principles for Teaching Problem Solving (researchgate.net)
• Hayes, J.R. (1989). The Complete Problem Solver. 2nd Edition. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Woods, D.R., Wright, J.D., Hoffman, T.W., Swartman, R.K., Doig, I.D. (1975). Teaching Problem solving Skills.
• Engineering Education. Vol 1, No. 1. p. 238. Washington, DC: The American Society for Engineering Education.

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5 Strategies for Engaging Students as Creative Problem Solvers

When a popular lake in Arvada, Colorado, was closed to the public because of an algae bloom, a student asked his science teacher what could be done. His question was the catalyst for a deep dive into creative problem solving that engaged 200 sixth-graders, four teachers, experts from the local water department, and other community members.

“If school was like this more often,” one of the students told us, “kids would be more interested and involved in their education.”

We couldn’t agree more. This is the kind of learning experience that not only addresses important academic goals, but also deepens students’ capacity to be self-directed, creative problem solvers.

Creative problem solving represents the fundamental shift underway in education from a system that requires and produces compliant workers to an ecosystem that cultivates self-directed problem seekers and solution finders. In a recent conversation, creativity expert Daniel Pink told us that problem seeking is becoming even more important than problem solving . Pink explained, “With the advent of machine learning and artificial intelligence, the really important question is, ‘What is the right problem to solve?’ We have all this data, so what is an interesting question we can ask of it?”

Getting good at problem solving (and problem seeking) takes time. From elementary through high school, students need to build their creative problem solving “muscle.” That’s how they cultivate the curiosity needed to identify problems worth solving and acquire the skillset to design and implement creative solutions.

How do we ensure that all students have multiple experiences to engage with real-world problems that matter to them? Here are five strategies to consider.

• Make connections. Instead of trying to shoehorn problem solving into content silos, focus on contexts that students find inherently interesting. Sustainability, invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship are examples of contexts that will spark students’ curiosity and deepen their engagement in learning. They all require interdisciplinary thinking to reach solutions and get others on board as allies.
• Commit to civic engagement. A healthy democracy depends on informed, engaged citizens. At this polarized moment, it’s more important than ever that students learn to assess information for accuracy or bias, understand perspectives different from their own, and learn how to work within our power structures toward desired change. These skills are too important to limit to high school civics or for extracurricular activities that reach only a few students. Instead, look for entry points to engage young citizens across grade levels and content areas. The possibilities are endless—from students advocating for sidewalks to hosting community forums about local issues. Students can partner with school leaders and teachers to reduce the carbon footprint of their school building.
• Grow your green light culture. In an earlier post , we described the system culture that enables innovation among adults. Just as it’s important for teachers to know that they have the green light to take risks and try new strategies, students also need to know that their curiosity is valued and that their “wild ideas” just might lead to breakthrough solutions.
• Support teachers. To scale the innovative learning experiences we’re advocating, teachers will need to adopt new pedagogies and assessment strategies. Instructional leaders can support their growth by offering professional development that focuses on high-interest contexts like sustainability, invention, or civic engagement. To enable interdisciplinary learning, teachers will need time to plan with colleagues across content areas. Leaders can also shine a spotlight on learning experiences that give students room to be self-directed creative problem solvers.
• Enlist partners. When the community is the curriculum, students learn by tackling challenges close to home. Parents, community organizations, and local businesses can help students identify challenges to tackle together. Students will build their problem-solving skills with the help of mentors, and community partners will get help on solving real-world issues. Everybody benefits.

Written by Ken Kay and Suzie Boss

Ken Kay and Suzie Boss are the co-authors of Redefining Student Success: Building a New Vision to Transform Leading, Teaching, and Learning . You can access the free companion guides for students and parents (available in both English and Spanish) online. Their book includes dozens of examples of students who are learning by tackling real-world challenges, along with resources to support teachers as they adopt new approaches to transform teaching and learning.

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8 Steps to Implementing Design Thinking in Your Classroom

Topics:   Tech & Learning

Encourage deep problem solving with design thinking.

Design thinking started as a way of thinking about how to creatively design indoor and outdoor spaces with an emphasis on solving problems in ways that benefit or increase interaction. To accomplish this goal, the process relies on empathy, brainstorming, and re-designing solutions, looping back repeatedly to try to see designs from the viewpoint of users. The business and product-design industries embrace design thinking because it provides a way to focus on user experiences -- now it’s time for our schools to embrace it! 

Hearts and minds pave the way for creative problem solving. 

As we use the design thinking approach in the classroom, we focus on key components such as empathy, the free flow of ideas, building prototypes, and gathering feedback, which results in creative solutions and ideas that might have never come to light otherwise. For example, in a design-sprint workshop this past spring, students were studying local and global problems and used design thinking to embrace creativity and solve some big problems!

As students worked on designing apps to solve some of these problems, they interviewed each other, sketched designs on index cards, and "tested" the usability and effect of their ideas.

This is how we do it.

In our classroom, we started a design thinking workshop where students started with lists of problems that they wanted to solve. As students worked on designing apps to solve some of these problems, they interviewed each other, sketched designs on index cards, and "tested" the usability and effect of their ideas. Our students worked by hand without technology in order to focus on being creative, as we didn't want students’ limited coding knowledge to interfere with their design solutions. After completing the initial app design, students adjust their sketches.

Students applied their learning to create a campaign that would change behavior in the school.

In a workshop with seventh-grade students, we used The D.School at Stanford University  project of designing a wallet as an introduction to design thinking. Students applied their learning to create a campaign that would change behavior in the school. Each student group tested their ideas (with permission from our principal) and analyzed their results, made adjustments, and reported back to the class. One of our most interesting campaigns was getting students to stop saying, "No offense," before they said something offensive.

Start implementing design thinking in your classroom!

To teach design thinking in your class, an easy first step is to use the free materials from the D.School , where students design something physical like a wallet. You can do it in 1-2 hours with your whole class. The hardest task is getting all of the materials ready. The lesson plans are very clear, as are the learning outcomes.

The next step is to make design thinking a part of your classroom. You don’t need to physically build things as long as students have materials to draw with. Here are eight steps to implementing design thinking in your classroom:

1.  Generate a list of problems students want to solve, which can be big or small, design based or issue based. 2.  Prepare materials to build and prototype with. 3.  Pair students up and have them interview each other about the problem. Asking questions and listening to answers is one of the most important parts of the process. Students might not interview each other at this point -- they might be paired up with the people affected by the problem. 4.  Give students time (but not too much time) to come up with some solutions to the problem, which they will sketch or plan out on paper. 5.  Pair up again to share ideas, explain, question, and take notes. 6.  Give students time to design and refine the prototype they chose with/for their partner. 7.  Pair up one more time for feedback. 8.  Make time for whole class or individual reflection.

This process can be completed in 90 minutes to two hours, or it can run for several days or weeks. If the problems you are tackling are complex and if students are going to actually build a solution, design thinking can transform a final assessment into a meaningful source of project-based learning.

I have wanted to be a teacher ever since I was 7 years old. At first it was because my first grade teacher was amazing and made school  an exciting and inspiring place to learn, play and be. When I reached Middle School, however, I wanted to be a teacher for the opposite reason. Our teachers were unkind and unhappy. Grades 6-8 were difficult for me and for my friends and I was determined that when I grew up, I would help other kids make the most of the middle years academically, socially and emotionally. I have been teaching middle and high school students since 1998 in Canada, the United States and at an international school in Thailand. My curricular focus has been in the Humanities; Language Arts and Social Studies and I have worked hard to integrate digital learning into every aspect of the program.  Currently, I am Co-creating and facilitating introductory coding and computational thinking workshops for teachers and students (online and face to face)Co-creating and facilitating digital literacy workshops for teachers and students (online and face to face)Reviewing teacher created classroom resources before publicationEditing and revising teacher certification texts (ESOL and ELA teachers)  

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Teaching Innovation and Problem Solving

Business leaders are calling for workers who can solve problems and innovate solutions, but how can educators teach such abstract skills? After all, isn't every problem unique? Doesn't every solution differ? Yes. But the fundamental tools of problems solving are common to all situations, and they can be taught. The two most important mental tools are critical thinking and creative thinking.

Critical thinking is convergent. It focuses intently on a topic, paying careful attention to logic and rules. Critical thinking breaks a subject into its parts and investigates how the parts relate to each other: categorizing, sequencing, comparing, ranking. It is in-the-box thinking.

Creative thinking is divergent. It sees a topic as a whole and imagines it as an analogy for something else: envisioning, improvising, riffing, wondering. Creative thinking reaches out to explore possibilities and defies convention and rules. It is out-of-the-box thinking.

Teaching Both Types

Just as students can learn specific strategies for convergent, analytical thinking, they can learn specific strategies for divergent, expansive thinking. Once students have gained these specific mental strategies, they can combine their critical and creative thinking to solve problems.

Problem solving starts with critical thinking—analyzing a problem—and then shifts to creative thinking—imagining solutions. To plan a solution requires more critical thinking, while applying the solution is a creative process. By shifting back and forth between the two types of thinking, students eventually arrive at a solution that works.

Problem-Solving Process

Rob King Explains Critical Thinking, Creative Thinking, and Problem Solving

In the following video, Rob King, author of Inquire: A Student Handbook for 21st Century Learning,  explains how to teach critical and creative teaching and how to combine them in problem solving.

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Engaging Problem-Solving Activities That Spark Student Interest

In today’s educational landscape, fostering critical thinking and problem-solving skills is paramount. As educators, we aim to cultivate a generation of students who excel not only academically but also in navigating real-world challenges with creativity and confidence. In this article, we’ll explore a range of engaging problem-solving activities crafted to captivate students’ interest and promote active learning across various subjects. From STEM design challenges to literature-based dilemmas, these hands-on activities are meticulously tailored to inspire curiosity, collaboration, and critical thinking in the classroom .

1. Escape Room Challenge: The Lost Treasure

Follow the steps below to implement this activity in the class:

• Introduce the escape room challenge and set the scene with a captivating treasure hunt theme.
• Transform the classroom into an immersive escape room environment with hidden clues and puzzles.
• Divide students into teams and provide instructions for the challenge, emphasizing teamwork and problem-solving skills.
• Allow teams to explore the room and uncover hidden clues and puzzles.
• Encourage observation and collaboration as teams work together to solve challenges.
• Present teams with a variety of puzzles and obstacles to overcome.
• Challenge them to solve each puzzle to progress through the adventure.
• Set a time limit for the challenge to create urgency and excitement.
• Encourage teams to work efficiently to unlock the secrets of the treasure before time runs out.
• Foster effective communication and teamwork among team members.
• Emphasize the importance of listening and leveraging each other’s strengths.
• Throughout the challenge, students will develop critical thinking, communication, and problem-solving skills.
• Encourage reflection on their strategies and teamwork dynamics.
• Celebrate each team’s success upon completing the challenge.
• Facilitate a debrief session for students to share insights and reflect on their experiences.

With this guide, you can create an engaging escape room challenge that promotes teamwork, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills in a fun and immersive learning environment.

2. STEM Design Challenge: Build a Bridge

Here is the step by step breakdown of this activity:

• Present the STEM design challenge to students, explaining that they will be tasked with building a bridge using simple materials.
• Supply students with materials such as popsicle sticks, straws, tape, string, and basic construction tools.
• Encourage students to inspect the materials and plan their bridge designs accordingly.
• Prompt students to brainstorm ideas and sketch their bridge designs before starting construction.
• Encourage them to consider factors like structural stability, weight distribution, and material durability.
• Instruct students to begin building their bridges based on their designs.
• Remind them to apply principles of engineering and physics as they construct their bridges.
• As students build their bridges, they’ll encounter challenges and obstacles.
• Encourage them to apply problem-solving strategies and make adjustments to their designs as needed.
• Throughout the construction process, facilitate discussions among students.
• Encourage them to reflect on their design choices and problem-solving approaches.
• Provide opportunities for students to test their bridges using various weight loads or simulated environmental conditions.
• Encourage them to observe how their bridges perform and make further adjustments if necessary.

8. Bridge-Building Showcase:

• Conclude the challenge with a bridge-building showcase where students present their creations to their peers.
• Encourage students to discuss their design process, challenges faced, and lessons learned.

9. Celebrate Achievements:

• Celebrate students’ achievements and highlight the importance of their creativity and engineering prowess.
• Encourage a spirit of inquiry and innovation as students showcase their bridge designs.

10. Reflect and Conclude:

• Conclude the STEM design challenge with a reflection session.
• Prompt students to reflect on their experiences and discuss the skills they’ve developed throughout the challenge.

By following these step-by-step instructions, students will engage in a hands-on STEM design challenge that fosters critical thinking, creativity, collaboration , and resilience while deepening their understanding of engineering and physics principles.

3. Mystery Box Inquiry: What’s Inside?

Follow these steps to carry out this activity in the class:

• Introduction and Setup: Introduce the Mystery Box Inquiry activity and set up a closed mystery box in the classroom.
• Group Formation and Instructions: Divide students into small groups and provide instructions emphasizing teamwork and critical thinking.
• Engage the Senses: Encourage students to gather around the mystery box and use their senses (touch, smell, hearing) to gather clues about its contents.
• Making Observations: Instruct students to carefully observe the exterior of the mystery box and record their observations.
• Formulating Hypotheses: Prompt students to formulate hypotheses about what might be inside the mystery box based on their observations.
• Testing Hypotheses: Invite students to test their hypotheses by proposing various scenarios and explanations.
• Refining Problem-Solving Strategies: Encourage students to refine their problem-solving strategies based on new information and insights.
• Group Discussion and Conclusion: Gather the groups for a discussion, allowing students to share their observations, hypotheses, and insights. Conclude by revealing the contents of the mystery box and discussing the problem-solving process.
• Reflection and Extension: Provide students with an opportunity to reflect on their experience and optionally extend the activity by challenging them to design their own mystery box inquiries.

By following these steps, you can facilitate an engaging Mystery Box Inquiry activity that prompts students to make astute observations, test hypotheses, and refine their problem-solving strategies effectively.

4. Real-World Problem Simulation: Environmental Crisis

• Introduce the environmental crisis scenario.
• Explain its significance and real-world implications.
• Divide students into teams with varied skill sets.
• Assign roles like researcher, negotiator, presenter.
• Task teams with researching causes, impacts, and solutions.
• Provide access to relevant resources.
• Encourage teams to negotiate with stakeholders.
• Prompt the development of comprehensive strategies.
• Organize a debate or town hall-style discussion.
• Facilitate analysis of proposed solutions.
• Allow teams to implement proposed solutions.
• Monitor progress and outcomes.
• Conclude with a group reflection session.
• Discuss lessons learned and the importance of problem-solving skills.

This is one of the problem solving activities that can create a simulated environmental crisis scenario, fostering collaboration, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills in students.

5. Mathematical Escape Puzzle: Crack the Code

• Introduce the escape puzzle, explaining the goal of unlocking a hidden code through math equations and logic puzzles.
• Set up materials in the classroom.
• Explain students’ task: solving math equations and logic puzzles to unlock the code.
• Provide puzzle materials to teams or individuals.
• Instruct on effective use.
• Prompt students to solve provided math equations and logic puzzles.
• Encourage collaboration and problem-solving among students.
• Offer guidance as needed.
• Monitor student progress and provide assistance when required.
• Celebrate successful completion of puzzles.
• Guide students through unlocking the hidden code.
• Conclude with a reflective discussion on math concepts and problem-solving skills applied.

By following these steps, you can engage students in a challenging Mathematical Escape Puzzle that reinforces math skills and promotes problem-solving abilities.

6. Literature-Based Problem Solving Activity: Character Dilemmas

• Choose literature pieces with rich character development and moral dilemmas that are suitable for your students’ age and maturity level.
• Present the Literature-Based Problem Solving activity to students, explaining that they will engage in thought-provoking analysis and ethical reflection inspired by characters in literature.
• Assign readings or excerpts from the selected literature to students.
• Instruct students to analyze the characters’ motivations, actions, and the ethical dilemmas they face.
• Encourage students to prepare for discussions by taking notes on key points, character motivations, and possible solutions to the dilemmas.
• Host lively discussions where students explore the moral dilemmas presented in the literature.
• Encourage students to express their thoughts, opinions, and interpretations while respecting diverse perspectives.
• Organize persuasive debates where students defend their viewpoints and propose solutions to the character dilemmas.
• Encourage students to use evidence from the literature to support their arguments.
• Prompt students to apply problem-solving skills to analyze the consequences of different decisions and actions within the literature.
• Encourage critical thinking as students navigate complex ethical situations.
• Guide students in applying the lessons learned from literature to real-world scenarios.
• Encourage reflection on how the problem-solving skills and ethical considerations explored in the activity can be applied in their own lives.
• Conclude the Literature-Based Problem Solving activity by summarizing key insights and takeaways from the discussions and debates.
• Encourage students to reflect on how their understanding of moral dilemmas and problem-solving skills has evolved through the activity.

It is one of the problem solving activities through which students will engage in thought-provoking analysis, ethical reflection, and problem-solving inspired by characters in literature, fostering critical thinking and ethical decision-making skills in a meaningful and engaging way.

Engaging problem solving activities are the cornerstone of active learning, fostering essential skills for success in today’s dynamic world. By seamlessly integrating these hands-on experiences into the classroom, educators inspire curiosity, collaboration, and critical thinking in their students. Whether through STEM design challenges, literature-based dilemmas, or coding adventures, these activities empower students to become adept problem solvers, equipped to navigate the challenges of tomorrow with confidence and ingenuity. Embrace the transformative potential of engaging problem-solving activities to unleash the full spectrum of educational possibilities and prepare students for a future brimming with possibilities.

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10 Tools for Your Students’ Creativity Toolbox

Creativity is a process, and you can guide students to develop theirs with a set of tools for different situations.

“Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.” —Edward de Bono

When I write an article, I usually draft two or three versions before I find the one I call the first draft. Creating an article requires exploring what I want to say and how I want to say it for my audience. I tell my children and students that the best writing begins during the revisions.

Creativity does not just occur in the arts—it happens within engineering design, policy making, problem solving, game strategizing, and especially lesson planning. And it’s a process that takes many forms, from conceiving an idea to shaping thoughts into something tangible to polishing a draft. During the process, there are likely many redos, as each draft and conversation inspires a new take on the idea, which may sharpen the picture of one’s creation.

It’s a mistake to believe that creativity is an inherent ability that some people have in plenty while others have little. Those are the thoughts of either self-doubters or people who struggle with explaining how to be creative. There are people who are gifted with a natural attunement to creative thinking, just as there are gifted athletes, scientists, and teachers, but dedicated study and practice can hone one’s creativity.

“Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value. It is a process; it’s not random.” —Ken Robinson

Creativity is a fluid and flexible process. Sometimes the best way to make something new is to muck around. Accept that the first, second, or nth round or draft may not be what is wanted. It’s a messy process. In the act of doing, we find pieces that become the foundation of the product that is eventually shaped.

The Creativity Toolbox

Here are a few tools for your students’ creativity toolbox. Practice these techniques with students and they’ll begin to understand how to use them for themselves.

• Don’t settle for the first great idea. Keep generating until you have at least three workable ideas. Chalk Talk (pdf) is a silent idea-mapping activity where participants dialog through writing. Affinity Mapping (pdf) is a mixture of shared reflective responses to prompts followed by collaborative organizing of the ideas. Much can be recorded in the students’ journals.
• Draft and redraft an idea, concept, solution, or product. Redraft from different perspectives, such as audience, cultural viewpoint, or supporter vs. antagonist.
• Participate in structured conversations. Dialog with reflection can lead to new and revised ideas. Use structured protocols that support reflection, such as Spider Web (Harkness) Discussions , and feedback, like the Charrette Protocol .
• Make mistakes through trial and error. Finding flaws is a treasured opportunity to design something better or see a new approach.
• Set the product or idea aside to marinate for some time. Work on something else for a day, or a week. Return to the creative work with a fresh perspective. When I do this, my revision work is more effective.
• Grow a work portfolio. Produce a collection of first drafts to draw inspiration for creative projects.
• Keep a journal. Start small with a journal for a scientist, writer, mathematician, engineer, or other. Inspiration strikes in the moment. As students capture their thinking through writing, they can find connections between two or three notes, which can result in an epiphany.
• Research to learn new ideas. We don’t know what we don’t know. Research deepens students’ knowledge base and opens up ways of thinking that they were previously unaware of.
• Critique peer work. Feedback protocols for writing, designs, or solutions to problems are good ways for students to express their thinking, get feedback, and then process how they might incorporate some into their work. Try gallery walks and Charrette.
• Solve problems and puzzles for exercise on how to think differently. Use team builders like ones from Teampedia for students to practice creative problem-solving. Conduct a post-reflection experience where students unpack the tools used from their creativity toolbox.

Expand your students’ creativity toolbox by exploring and teaching three or four of these tools. As with curriculum skills, students build understanding and competency with the tools themselves, so that they can select the one that fits their current need. Conducting science experiments is unnecessarily difficult if one does not know the purpose and use of the scientific method or engineering design steps. Composing a quality research paper is hopeless if one does not have the skills for information fluency and finding authoritative references. The same is true with creativity.

“Creativity is a wild mind & a disciplined eye.” —Dorothy Parker

Being creative requires development of tools. Being creative means that a person can look in their toolbox and try one of the strategies they’ve practiced—and if the results are a failure, they can use that opportunity to rummage around for another tool. Students can practice independence when their creativity toolbox is well equipped. What matters most with creativity is getting started.

Classroom Q&A

With larry ferlazzo.

In this EdWeek blog, an experiment in knowledge-gathering, Ferlazzo will address readers’ questions on classroom management, ELL instruction, lesson planning, and other issues facing teachers. Send your questions to [email protected]. Read more from this blog.

Eight Instructional Strategies for Promoting Critical Thinking

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(This is the first post in a three-part series.)

The new question-of-the-week is:

What is critical thinking and how can we integrate it into the classroom?

This three-part series will explore what critical thinking is, if it can be specifically taught and, if so, how can teachers do so in their classrooms.

Today’s guests are Dara Laws Savage, Patrick Brown, Meg Riordan, Ph.D., and Dr. PJ Caposey. Dara, Patrick, and Meg were also guests on my 10-minute BAM! Radio Show . You can also find a list of, and links to, previous shows here.

You might also be interested in The Best Resources On Teaching & Learning Critical Thinking In The Classroom .

Current Events

Dara Laws Savage is an English teacher at the Early College High School at Delaware State University, where she serves as a teacher and instructional coach and lead mentor. Dara has been teaching for 25 years (career preparation, English, photography, yearbook, newspaper, and graphic design) and has presented nationally on project-based learning and technology integration:

There is so much going on right now and there is an overload of information for us to process. Did you ever stop to think how our students are processing current events? They see news feeds, hear news reports, and scan photos and posts, but are they truly thinking about what they are hearing and seeing?

I tell my students that my job is not to give them answers but to teach them how to think about what they read and hear. So what is critical thinking and how can we integrate it into the classroom? There are just as many definitions of critical thinking as there are people trying to define it. However, the Critical Think Consortium focuses on the tools to create a thinking-based classroom rather than a definition: “Shape the climate to support thinking, create opportunities for thinking, build capacity to think, provide guidance to inform thinking.” Using these four criteria and pairing them with current events, teachers easily create learning spaces that thrive on thinking and keep students engaged.

One successful technique I use is the FIRE Write. Students are given a quote, a paragraph, an excerpt, or a photo from the headlines. Students are asked to F ocus and respond to the selection for three minutes. Next, students are asked to I dentify a phrase or section of the photo and write for two minutes. Third, students are asked to R eframe their response around a specific word, phrase, or section within their previous selection. Finally, students E xchange their thoughts with a classmate. Within the exchange, students also talk about how the selection connects to what we are covering in class.

There was a controversial Pepsi ad in 2017 involving Kylie Jenner and a protest with a police presence. The imagery in the photo was strikingly similar to a photo that went viral with a young lady standing opposite a police line. Using that image from a current event engaged my students and gave them the opportunity to critically think about events of the time.

Here are the two photos and a student response:

F - Focus on both photos and respond for three minutes

In the first picture, you see a strong and courageous black female, bravely standing in front of two officers in protest. She is risking her life to do so. Iesha Evans is simply proving to the world she does NOT mean less because she is black … and yet officers are there to stop her. She did not step down. In the picture below, you see Kendall Jenner handing a police officer a Pepsi. Maybe this wouldn’t be a big deal, except this was Pepsi’s weak, pathetic, and outrageous excuse of a commercial that belittles the whole movement of people fighting for their lives.

I - Identify a word or phrase, underline it, then write about it for two minutes

A white, privileged female in place of a fighting black woman was asking for trouble. A struggle we are continuously fighting every day, and they make a mockery of it. “I know what will work! Here Mr. Police Officer! Drink some Pepsi!” As if. Pepsi made a fool of themselves, and now their already dwindling fan base continues to ever shrink smaller.

R - Reframe your thoughts by choosing a different word, then write about that for one minute

You don’t know privilege until it’s gone. You don’t know privilege while it’s there—but you can and will be made accountable and aware. Don’t use it for evil. You are not stupid. Use it to do something. Kendall could’ve NOT done the commercial. Kendall could’ve released another commercial standing behind a black woman. Anything!

Exchange - Remember to discuss how this connects to our school song project and our previous discussions?

This connects two ways - 1) We want to convey a strong message. Be powerful. Show who we are. And Pepsi definitely tried. … Which leads to the second connection. 2) Not mess up and offend anyone, as had the one alma mater had been linked to black minstrels. We want to be amazing, but we have to be smart and careful and make sure we include everyone who goes to our school and everyone who may go to our school.

As a final step, students read and annotate the full article and compare it to their initial response.

Using current events and critical-thinking strategies like FIRE writing helps create a learning space where thinking is the goal rather than a score on a multiple-choice assessment. Critical-thinking skills can cross over to any of students’ other courses and into life outside the classroom. After all, we as teachers want to help the whole student be successful, and critical thinking is an important part of navigating life after they leave our classrooms.

‘Before-Explore-Explain’

Patrick Brown is the executive director of STEM and CTE for the Fort Zumwalt school district in Missouri and an experienced educator and author :

Planning for critical thinking focuses on teaching the most crucial science concepts, practices, and logical-thinking skills as well as the best use of instructional time. One way to ensure that lessons maintain a focus on critical thinking is to focus on the instructional sequence used to teach.

Explore-before-explain teaching is all about promoting critical thinking for learners to better prepare students for the reality of their world. What having an explore-before-explain mindset means is that in our planning, we prioritize giving students firsthand experiences with data, allow students to construct evidence-based claims that focus on conceptual understanding, and challenge students to discuss and think about the why behind phenomena.

Just think of the critical thinking that has to occur for students to construct a scientific claim. 1) They need the opportunity to collect data, analyze it, and determine how to make sense of what the data may mean. 2) With data in hand, students can begin thinking about the validity and reliability of their experience and information collected. 3) They can consider what differences, if any, they might have if they completed the investigation again. 4) They can scrutinize outlying data points for they may be an artifact of a true difference that merits further exploration of a misstep in the procedure, measuring device, or measurement. All of these intellectual activities help them form more robust understanding and are evidence of their critical thinking.

In explore-before-explain teaching, all of these hard critical-thinking tasks come before teacher explanations of content. Whether we use discovery experiences, problem-based learning, and or inquiry-based activities, strategies that are geared toward helping students construct understanding promote critical thinking because students learn content by doing the practices valued in the field to generate knowledge.

An Issue of Equity

Meg Riordan, Ph.D., is the chief learning officer at The Possible Project, an out-of-school program that collaborates with youth to build entrepreneurial skills and mindsets and provides pathways to careers and long-term economic prosperity. She has been in the field of education for over 25 years as a middle and high school teacher, school coach, college professor, regional director of N.Y.C. Outward Bound Schools, and director of external research with EL Education:

Although critical thinking often defies straightforward definition, most in the education field agree it consists of several components: reasoning, problem-solving, and decisionmaking, plus analysis and evaluation of information, such that multiple sides of an issue can be explored. It also includes dispositions and “the willingness to apply critical-thinking principles, rather than fall back on existing unexamined beliefs, or simply believe what you’re told by authority figures.”

Despite variation in definitions, critical thinking is nonetheless promoted as an essential outcome of students’ learning—we want to see students and adults demonstrate it across all fields, professions, and in their personal lives. Yet there is simultaneously a rationing of opportunities in schools for students of color, students from under-resourced communities, and other historically marginalized groups to deeply learn and practice critical thinking.

For example, many of our most underserved students often spend class time filling out worksheets, promoting high compliance but low engagement, inquiry, critical thinking, or creation of new ideas. At a time in our world when college and careers are critical for participation in society and the global, knowledge-based economy, far too many students struggle within classrooms and schools that reinforce low-expectations and inequity.

If educators aim to prepare all students for an ever-evolving marketplace and develop skills that will be valued no matter what tomorrow’s jobs are, then we must move critical thinking to the forefront of classroom experiences. And educators must design learning to cultivate it.

So, what does that really look like?

Unpack and define critical thinking

To understand critical thinking, educators need to first unpack and define its components. What exactly are we looking for when we speak about reasoning or exploring multiple perspectives on an issue? How does problem-solving show up in English, math, science, art, or other disciplines—and how is it assessed? At Two Rivers, an EL Education school, the faculty identified five constructs of critical thinking, defined each, and created rubrics to generate a shared picture of quality for teachers and students. The rubrics were then adapted across grade levels to indicate students’ learning progressions.

At Avenues World School, critical thinking is one of the Avenues World Elements and is an enduring outcome embedded in students’ early experiences through 12th grade. For instance, a kindergarten student may be expected to “identify cause and effect in familiar contexts,” while an 8th grader should demonstrate the ability to “seek out sufficient evidence before accepting a claim as true,” “identify bias in claims and evidence,” and “reconsider strongly held points of view in light of new evidence.”

When faculty and students embrace a common vision of what critical thinking looks and sounds like and how it is assessed, educators can then explicitly design learning experiences that call for students to employ critical-thinking skills. This kind of work must occur across all schools and programs, especially those serving large numbers of students of color. As Linda Darling-Hammond asserts , “Schools that serve large numbers of students of color are least likely to offer the kind of curriculum needed to ... help students attain the [critical-thinking] skills needed in a knowledge work economy. ”

So, what can it look like to create those kinds of learning experiences?

Designing experiences for critical thinking

After defining a shared understanding of “what” critical thinking is and “how” it shows up across multiple disciplines and grade levels, it is essential to create learning experiences that impel students to cultivate, practice, and apply these skills. There are several levers that offer pathways for teachers to promote critical thinking in lessons:

1.Choose Compelling Topics: Keep it relevant

A key Common Core State Standard asks for students to “write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.” That might not sound exciting or culturally relevant. But a learning experience designed for a 12th grade humanities class engaged learners in a compelling topic— policing in America —to analyze and evaluate multiple texts (including primary sources) and share the reasoning for their perspectives through discussion and writing. Students grappled with ideas and their beliefs and employed deep critical-thinking skills to develop arguments for their claims. Embedding critical-thinking skills in curriculum that students care about and connect with can ignite powerful learning experiences.

2. Make Local Connections: Keep it real

At The Possible Project , an out-of-school-time program designed to promote entrepreneurial skills and mindsets, students in a recent summer online program (modified from in-person due to COVID-19) explored the impact of COVID-19 on their communities and local BIPOC-owned businesses. They learned interviewing skills through a partnership with Everyday Boston , conducted virtual interviews with entrepreneurs, evaluated information from their interviews and local data, and examined their previously held beliefs. They created blog posts and videos to reflect on their learning and consider how their mindsets had changed as a result of the experience. In this way, we can design powerful community-based learning and invite students into productive struggle with multiple perspectives.

3. Create Authentic Projects: Keep it rigorous

At Big Picture Learning schools, students engage in internship-based learning experiences as a central part of their schooling. Their school-based adviser and internship-based mentor support them in developing real-world projects that promote deeper learning and critical-thinking skills. Such authentic experiences teach “young people to be thinkers, to be curious, to get from curiosity to creation … and it helps students design a learning experience that answers their questions, [providing an] opportunity to communicate it to a larger audience—a major indicator of postsecondary success.” Even in a remote environment, we can design projects that ask more of students than rote memorization and that spark critical thinking.

Our call to action is this: As educators, we need to make opportunities for critical thinking available not only to the affluent or those fortunate enough to be placed in advanced courses. The tools are available, let’s use them. Let’s interrogate our current curriculum and design learning experiences that engage all students in real, relevant, and rigorous experiences that require critical thinking and prepare them for promising postsecondary pathways.

Critical Thinking & Student Engagement

Dr. PJ Caposey is an award-winning educator, keynote speaker, consultant, and author of seven books who currently serves as the superintendent of schools for the award-winning Meridian CUSD 223 in northwest Illinois. You can find PJ on most social-media platforms as MCUSDSupe:

When I start my keynote on student engagement, I invite two people up on stage and give them each five paper balls to shoot at a garbage can also conveniently placed on stage. Contestant One shoots their shot, and the audience gives approval. Four out of 5 is a heckuva score. Then just before Contestant Two shoots, I blindfold them and start moving the garbage can back and forth. I usually try to ensure that they can at least make one of their shots. Nobody is successful in this unfair environment.

I thank them and send them back to their seats and then explain that this little activity was akin to student engagement. While we all know we want student engagement, we are shooting at different targets. More importantly, for teachers, it is near impossible for them to hit a target that is moving and that they cannot see.

Within the world of education and particularly as educational leaders, we have failed to simplify what student engagement looks like, and it is impossible to define or articulate what student engagement looks like if we cannot clearly articulate what critical thinking is and looks like in a classroom. Because, simply, without critical thought, there is no engagement.

The good news here is that critical thought has been defined and placed into taxonomies for decades already. This is not something new and not something that needs to be redefined. I am a Bloom’s person, but there is nothing wrong with DOK or some of the other taxonomies, either. To be precise, I am a huge fan of Daggett’s Rigor and Relevance Framework. I have used that as a core element of my practice for years, and it has shaped who I am as an instructional leader.

So, in order to explain critical thought, a teacher or a leader must familiarize themselves with these tried and true taxonomies. Easy, right? Yes, sort of. The issue is not understanding what critical thought is; it is the ability to integrate it into the classrooms. In order to do so, there are a four key steps every educator must take.

• Integrating critical thought/rigor into a lesson does not happen by chance, it happens by design. Planning for critical thought and engagement is much different from planning for a traditional lesson. In order to plan for kids to think critically, you have to provide a base of knowledge and excellent prompts to allow them to explore their own thinking in order to analyze, evaluate, or synthesize information.
• SIDE NOTE – Bloom’s verbs are a great way to start when writing objectives, but true planning will take you deeper than this.

QUESTIONING

• If the questions and prompts given in a classroom have correct answers or if the teacher ends up answering their own questions, the lesson will lack critical thought and rigor.
• Script five questions forcing higher-order thought prior to every lesson. Experienced teachers may not feel they need this, but it helps to create an effective habit.
• If lessons are rigorous and assessments are not, students will do well on their assessments, and that may not be an accurate representation of the knowledge and skills they have mastered. If lessons are easy and assessments are rigorous, the exact opposite will happen. When deciding to increase critical thought, it must happen in all three phases of the game: planning, instruction, and assessment.

TALK TIME / CONTROL

• To increase rigor, the teacher must DO LESS. This feels counterintuitive but is accurate. Rigorous lessons involving tons of critical thought must allow for students to work on their own, collaborate with peers, and connect their ideas. This cannot happen in a silent room except for the teacher talking. In order to increase rigor, decrease talk time and become comfortable with less control. Asking questions and giving prompts that lead to no true correct answer also means less control. This is a tough ask for some teachers. Explained differently, if you assign one assignment and get 30 very similar products, you have most likely assigned a low-rigor recipe. If you assign one assignment and get multiple varied products, then the students have had a chance to think deeply, and you have successfully integrated critical thought into your classroom.

Thanks to Dara, Patrick, Meg, and PJ for their contributions!

Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at [email protected] . When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo .

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3 ways to support creative problem-solving in schools

Global survey claims creative problem-solving is crucial for students, but is not taught enough in schools.

The vast majority of educators and policymakers believe students should develop creative problem-solving skills in school–but the problem, they say, is that not enough schools teach this concept.

Ninety-seven percent of educators and 96 percent of policymakers in a global research study from Adobe said creative problem-solving is important for today’s students, and they said they believe students who excel at creative problem-solving will have higher-earning jobs in the future. In fact, creative problem-solving skills are in high demand today for senior-level and higher-paying careers.

But despite the evident need for such skills, schools are not committed to teaching them. Sixty-nine percent of educators and 61 percent of policymakers said they agree that today’s curricula do not emphasize creative problem-solving enough.

(Next page: Three approaches to teaching creative problem-solving in schools)

The survey, which includes responses from 1,600 secondary and higher-ed educators and 400 policymakers, identifies numerous barriers, many at the global level, that prevent schools from adequately incorporating creative problem-solving lessons in classrooms.

Those barriers include:

• Lack of time to create (79 percent)
• Lack of educator training for new software (77 percent)
• Lack of access to software in classrooms (73 percent)
• Lack of student access to software at home (73 percent)
• Lack of educator control over lessons in classrooms (63 percent)

More than half of educators said the do not have access to the tools (58 percent) and training (55 percent) they need to foster creative problem-solving skills. School-budget restraints and a lack of time, technology, and training keep teachers from getting the knowledge they need.

“The reason I started teaching creative problem-solving was because, sometimes, students don’t know how to draw out of themselves the best solution to a problem,” said Mark Shufflebottom, professor, bachelor of interaction design at Sheridan College in Ontario. “We’re dealing with students young in age and they don’t have a great deal of experience to draw on. It’s very easy for them to look at something else [for the solution]. We don’t want them to do that. We want the idea to come from their own understanding.”

“There is a clear gap between what educators and policymakers know tomorrow’s workforce needs, and what today’s students are learning in school,” said Tacy Trowbridge, global lead for education programs at Adobe. “Educators, policymakers, and industry—technology in particular—need to come together to improve opportunities for students. Creative technologies can help educators teach and nurture critically important ‘soft’ skills, and policies and curricula need to evolve to complete the equation.”

Educators and policymakers are in agreement when they say they believe it will take a variety of solutions to better nurture creative problem-solving, saying that it should be better integrated into today’s curricula (89 percent of educators and 87 percent of policymakers), and that current curricula should be reformed to better support creative problem-solving (87 percent and 88 percent, respectively).

Eighty percent of surveyed U.S. educators said they believe current policies hurt their abilities to nurture creative problem-solving.

But there are three main ways to bridge the skills gap: 1. Training, including additional professional development for educators and requiring more digital-literacy courses. 2. Curriculum reform, such as revisiting standardized-testing requirements and encouraging more local control of curricula rather than national standardization of curricula. 3. Technology, such as allocating more budget to schools for technology and prioritizing access to technology for underprivileged students.

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12 Strategies For Creating A Culture Of Problem-Solving In Your Classroom

Problem-solving and critical thinking are both skills and habits that allow students to apply and transfer academic knowledge into the real-world.

What Are The Best Strategies For Creating A Culture Of Problem-Solving In Your Classroom?

by TeachThought Staff

Without the ability to solve problems, learning is ‘academic.’

Problem-solving, creative thinking, and critical thinking are both skills and habits that allow students to apply and transfer academic knowledge into real-world application. Unfortunately, problem-solving isn’t a significant part of most curriculum in K-12 schools.

Further, problem-solving–being a habit as much as a skill–both creates and is dependent upon a kind of culture in your classroom. To remedy the situation, and grow fruitful and happy students within the confines of the syllabus you are bound to, start to fix the problem yourself by creating an atmosphere of problem-solving in your classes. Create situations where students have to think for themselves.

Here are some ideas.

1. Use Exit Slips

Instead of telling students what the learning objective is for a task, have them come up with one when they’ve completed it. Make it the exit slip.

2. Ask 3B4ME

Instead of answering an unnecessary question, urge students to take back their power by taking another moment to think about the problem, then to check their books and other resources around them for the solution, before asking their table for help, before asking the teacher. Adam Schoenbart’s advice here is excellent: Ask 3B4ME

3. Perfect–And Actually Use–The Gradual Release Of Responsibility Model

Gradually reduce the scaffolds on tasks, increasing the amount of autonomy with the approach to a task. Explain that in the previous task you helped in this way, but that in this task you are not. This will make students connect previous experiences.

4. Allow–Or Require–Students To Help Shape The Curriculum

The goal is to get students to solve the problem of satisfying the demands of the syllabus while making the learning interesting. Outline what must be covered, and challenge them to come up with interesting and creative ways to get it done. You could begin by looking at the whole course, and asking for suggestions about projects. The more adventurous could increase the challenge by asking – ‘here’s what must be done in this lesson – how can we achieve it’. Trust yourself that you can handle the change in direction, and that if a student comes up with a great way to get to the same place, then be brave enough to go with it.

How you handle the change in direction is the best example of problem-solving there is. Even if no one comes up with something this time, the process will not only stimulate their thinking to some degree, but also empower them to know that you are offering some autonomy in the learning. But the real gain in such a process is that students will begin the process of truly understanding the outcomes of the course. Then out of nowhere you are achieving the desired growth, but in a sustainable manner.

5. Make Sure Students Review Instructions Periodically

Teach students to return to instructions after they have completed some of the work. They may not, but when they don’t and have trouble, use that as a teachable moment.

Why can this help? When students first view a task, they often only take in the first few components of the task, and then automatically ask what’s next once they’ve got to that point. Encourage the habit of revisiting the instructions, emphasizing to students that the brain is now able to process the next parts of the task.

6. Have Students Articulate Learning To Others

Get students to make connections between their learning more often. A great way to do this is to get students to go around the school and describe to another teacher or school leader the activity or activities involved, and ask them what they think the real world learning is for the task/s. The responses will make the student consider the relevancy a lot more, especially if the responder asks the student some questions.

7. Use ABC Feedback

When questioning students, make it interactive. Get them on their toes when discussions ensue. Use Alez Quigley’s excellent suggestion of ABC Feedback to energize student interaction in lessons. Every question then becomes a chance to solve a problem.

8. Encourage Them To Be Self-Sufficient

Redirect students’ questions back to them or to other students. This could have several possible outcomes: it provides more students with a chance to participate in a discussion; provides opportunities for students to teach; and will minimize the number of unnecessary questions, as students are by far the harshest critics of time-wasting, especially when it’s theirs.

9. ‘Play With’ Confusion

Ask questions that deliberately create thinking, such as thunks. Questions that create confusion are also winners – I guarantee someone in the class will respond and have a go at making sense of it. If played well (it can be a fine line at times), creating a space where the class is not able to assume what is presented to them is straight forward, or accurate, begins an unmistakable increase in student awareness, and brain activity.

Examples include getting students to remember everything around the room they see that is the color of white, and then, ensuring they don’t look up, get them to write down everything in the room that is the color green; writing 4 random words on the board and getting students to rank them in order; add a word to board and have students design a question where the word is the only possible answer; adding deliberately wrong info within an activity and getting students to spot it; and of course, riddles – which every student seems to love.

10. Helps Students Focus On The Solution Instead Of The Problem

Teach students what Patch Adams had to learn: to focus on the solution rather than the problem in front of them. It’s incredible what a small change in perspective can achieve.

11. Explain How They’re learning

Above all else, ensure that you label the next unit you teach as a Problem-Solving Unit and consistently refer to it as it unfolds. Explicitly discussing the problem-solving aspects of each activity will develop and consolidate the expectations that your classroom demands. Students will have the chance to thrive as a result!

12. Ask Students What Problems Matter To Them

Then use inquiry learning , create a self-directed classroom culture , promote collaboration, and more to help them solve those problems for themselves.

Teaching is not about raising grades. Teaching should always be motivated by a need to create amazing people. Amazing people, by definition, are active sort of people, inspiring, creative and resilient. They are people who flourish in the right conditions, and who grow with challenge and inquiry.

These qualities are not unique to a select group of people defined by hereditary–they are outcomes of having to consistently solve problems. Changing your classroom from a delivery room into a learning room relies entirely on your ability to change students from receptors to problem solvers.

So let’s get to it, there’s not a moment to lose!

TeachThought is an organization dedicated to innovation in education through the growth of outstanding teachers.