Students love to play games. These strategy games will help them develop critical thinking skills as they problem solve. High school students will partner with them to help them learn to use strategies as a way to approach a game.
The 3rd graders in our school are good thinkers who like to have fun.
They enjoy playing games with their friends. Our school is targeting problem solving as an area that we need improvement in. We will do several problems throughout the day to increase our ability to solve math problems. Our students would enjoy finding a way to learn this skill while spending time playing with their friends.
My Project
Research shows that puzzles and logic problems get easier for students the more they do them because the act of solving them creates brain patterns that can be accessed when doing new problems. Since students are often unaware of their own thinking processes, time will be provided for students to reflect on how they solved the problem, what they did well, and what they would do differently. Working in small groups and with partners will increase their problem solving skills as they observe other strategies at work. Students will be able to take home a game and share it with their family. Parents will be given some debriefing questions to ask their children after playing a game. This will allow the family to have a discussion about their problem solving strategies. Each family will write comments in our problem solving journal. The student will share the comments with the class the next day.
Strategy games require a number of critical thinking skills: induction, deduction, analysis, and synthesis.
These games will help students create an organized approach to problem solving. They will discover that problem solving is something they do every day and that it can be fun, challenging, and useful. Sharing these games with their family will have the added benefit of involving the parents in the education of their children.
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Mrs. Whitchurch and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
