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Designing Problem-centered Lessons:
- Focus on developing the children's reasoning skills rather than on the correctness of the answers.
- Present a problem that is based on the students' interests and is meaningful to them.
- Identify the background knowledge needed to solve the problem and assess how much of it the students already possess.
- Introduce content material that provides useful background information but does not limit solutions to the problem.
- Incorporate some or all of the steps of thinking into the lesson.
- Provide hands-on activities rather than direct instruction.
- Ask the students to give reasons for their answers.
- Incorporate students' planning into the lesson.
- Provide a variety of open-ended materials that do not limit the children to one way of solving the problem.
- Make available a variety of resource books to assist in problem-solving.
- Throughout the lesson, pose additional open-ended questions that will further probe the children's thinking.
- Rephrase the questions when the students are not responding.
- Let the students explore and test their own solutions even when they do not fit your preconceived answers.
- Make the students feel successful at the end of the lesson by focusing on the strategies they have tried (even if the problem has not been "solved").
Using Materials in a Problem-Centered Classroom
- Provide a wide variety of materials in the classroom (including teacher made and found materials) and give students free access to them.
- Provide materials in the classroom that naturally pose problems (e.g., broken appliances with their inner workings revealed).
- Set up a variety of interest areas and learning centers in the room.
- Make the environment as orderly, systematic, and organized as possible. Label the shelves clearly.
- Encourage the students to find and use materials in diverse ways rather than copy one another.
- Use the walls to display students' products that document their diverse solutions to the problems you have posed.
- Display materials on the walls that pose problems directly or are written records of the students solutions.
