Maggie: Our school has got many resources to help us teach problem solving skills to children. Today's resource, which I use, was from a pack called We've Done It, and it's got a variety of different ideas and teaching strategies to help teach the children how to problem solve effectively.
Not only in this area, we also have lots of resources for maths problem solving. For example the Maths Challenge books, Maths Key Facts books and we've got lots of other resources as well, which we've been using over the years.
With regard to maths problem solving I do keep an assessment record of how the children are getting on. And how I keep that is to see first of all how they are working together, working cooperatively. Also I need to see whether or not they identify the correct strategy to solve the problem, from their working, and also their solution. That gives me an indication of how they have coped with the problem.
For technology problem solving I keep informal records for assessment purposes. And how I do that is just by monitoring the children. By going around the groups and pairs, seeing first of all if they understand what the task is, then monitor to see whether or not they discuss ideas with one another. How they do with completing a task, and then how the children appraise one another, evaluate each other. So it's on an informal basis.