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May 2021
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Problem Solving: How to do it Effectively and Why
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Using Hobbies to Develop Executive Functioning Skills
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Problem Solving: How to do it Effectively and Why

Problem solving is one of the most important skills for success in both academics and life, but it is a skill that few people understand. Many adults struggle to teach their children how to effectively approach a task from multiple angles, and schools often do not offer classes that teach students how to solve problems. Instead, students are supposed to build this skill organically through the many challenges they face while navigating their coursework. Yet the tests that determine so much of their academic futures, such as the SAT, ACT, LSAT, GRE, and countless others, all heavily emphasize problem solving. So, what can parents do to help their children build this essential life skill? 
Let's Get Meta
Metacognition is often described as “thinking about thinking,” and helping your children begin to think about their own thinking can help them to build and consistently use a wide variety of skills that can improve their academic performance. Metacognition is at the heart of what Thinking Organized seeks to help our clients do – build a toolbox of skills to address a wide variety of situations.
Work the Steps
The process of building problem-solving skills through metacognition begins by identifying the stages of problem solving. Broadly speaking, there are five stages every problem solver should engage with when presented with a challenge:

  1. Identify the problem 
  2. Represent the problem
  3. Determine an appropriate path to problem solution
  4. Carry out the plan
  5. Evaluate performance

Identify the Problem 
Like so many of the skills that we utilize daily, problem solving involves a combination of conscious and unconscious thought. The most important thing parents can do to help their children become stronger problem solvers is encourage them to think out loud. Ask your children questions about the problem they are facing. Are they able to identify the problem correctly? Can they restate what the question is asking them to? If not, ask leading questions to help your children parse through the problem. For example, if they must convert 32 miles to centimeters, they should tell you that they are going to need to use utilize conversion factors to translate miles to centimeters.

Represent the Problem 
Once your children understand the problem, they should then represent the problem appropriately. Everyone utilizes both internal and external representations, but for the purposes of teaching problem solving, internal representations can be challenging. Ask your children to represent the problem visually. A complex math problem has multiple calculations that must be carried out to reach the conclusion. By building a visual representation of the problem, your children can often avoid making mistakes. A wonderful example of this is the method many teachers use for solving unit conversion problems. Consider again the basic problem of converting miles to centimeters. Your children could build the following graphic representation of the steps involved in that conversion:
Building a visual representation like the one above allows students to clarify their thinking and avoid making mistakes as they move through the problem. When seeking to help your children build these representations, it can be helpful to think about your own representations of problems. For instance, if you were asked to multiply 32 x 64, you might use an auditory representation of the stages of the mathematical problem, or you might utilize a visual representation of the problem and imagine that you are seeing the numbers on a piece of paper. If you were asked what the 17th letter of the English alphabet was, you might sing a little song in your head and count along on your fingers, or you might visually combine letters into groups and move through the groups until you arrived at the appropriate letter. Neither of these representations is better or worse than the other, but without them these seemingly easy tasks would be surprisingly difficult. For students who have not mastered the skill of problem solving, they require support in considering multiple options and their respective benefits. 

Determining an Appropriate Path to Problem Solution
Once your children have effectively represented the problem, be it internally or externally, they must then determine a path from the starting state to the identified solution. For some problems, this will be difficult and could involve repeated experimentation and trial and error. For others, like the basic conversion problem, a path is relatively easy to construct:
Carry Out the Plan
Once your children have determined an effective path from the initial state to the solution, all that remains is to carry out that plan. For the conversion problem, this is a relatively simple process:
Evaluate Performance
Once your children have found a solution, ask them to evaluate their performance. Did they learn a new method of representation that was particularly effective? Did they mischaracterize the nature of the problem because they read the question too quickly? Taking the time to evaluate their own performance can help them identify what they did well and reinforce those good habits as well as identifying any recurring mistakes. Whether it is through their own ingenuity or through receiving help from a parent or peer, one of the most valuable skills that can be gained by problem solving is an understanding of a basic framework for solving problems of a certain type. The conversion example is an effective strategy for solving all unit conversions, which is a skill that children will be asked to employ repeatedly throughout their education. As students learn more and more strategies, their comfort level solving a wide variety of problems will increase.
Final Thoughts
Problem solving is a difficult skill to understand, which makes it a difficult skill to teach. The most important thing you can do is to encourage your children to think metacognitively. Ask them to state what the problem is asking for in their own words. Ask them how they intend to represent the problem. Ask them how they plan to solve the problem. By motivating them to think about how they are thinking, you will help instill in them a belief that this is a unique skill which, like every other skill, requires practice to perfect and can be improved through their own efforts.
Summer 2021 Programs - Registration Open!
Summer is a time of relaxation, but it is also a time of preparation. By reviewing past academic material, students can keep their skills sharp while simultaneously preparing for the upcoming school year. Thinking Organized is offering several exciting programs for students in different age ranges this summer, and we cordially invite you to sign your children up for them!

Please refer to our programs for elementary school, middle school, high school, and college on our website.
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Using Hobbies to Develop Executive Functioning Skills

We’re now over a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, and like many of you, all of these hours spent indoors compelled me to find hobbies to occupy my time. While my husband perfected the art of baking Earl Grey pound cake (which you should totally try), I started collecting Pokémon cards! Well, “started” isn’t really the right word. Like many children of the 90s, I begged my parents to buy me cards all throughout my childhood. When the pandemic started, I found myself drawn to this important, nostalgic part of my life again. Little did I know that something so seemingly simple would involve a host of executive functioning skills.