By Alessandra King, Posted January 9, 2015 – 

Teamwork, problem solving, interpersonal skills, and creative thinking are the higher-order 21st century skills that are in high demand and strongly correlate with the competencies encouraged by the Common Core’s Standards for Mathematical Practice. How can I develop them in my students? That’s when Antoine de Saint-Exupery comes to the rescue: “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

There is no better place to start than problem solving: All children like puzzles and brainteasers, and my students are no exception, especially when the atmosphere is one of collaboration and teamwork. To this end, we try to take advantage of, and participate in, friendly local math competitions, such as the “Math Meets” organized by the independent school association of our area or the Intermediate Math Open (here are some examples of problems and corresponding solutions). For in-class practice, we use the Art of Problem Solving website, which is one of the richest in terms of the variety of resources. Run the Problem of the Week program and look for a range of ways to furnish your students with opportunities for creative thinking. For example, our “STEM Station,” a nook in our middle school hallway, is set up as an informal problem-solving area that fosters students’ creativity (see the images below). On the table are strategy and logic games, such as Mastermind, Set, Mancala, Blokus, and other peg board games; pencil-and-paper puzzles, such as logic matrices, magic squares, Sudoku, KenKen, and so on; geometry-oriented problems and hands-on activities (aimed at improving visual discrimination and spatial abilities), such as tangrams, origami, and pattern blocks; and construction supplies, such as Tinkertoys®, blocks, K-Nex®, or Lego® Architecture kits. A locked iPad installed on a wall can work as a museum kiosk, allowing the students to play with only selected math websites (TED lessons, on mathematics and other STEM topics, or Vi Hart videos; interactive practice sites like Purplemath®, coolmath®, Buzzmath®, and Math Playground®; and online logic games and puzzles).

Writing and publishing a math magazine or an original puzzle book are fun ways to engage students’ creativity, and so is looking for examples of mathematics all around us in the “Found Math” project. (Incidentally the Mathematical Association of America site, from Devlin’s blog to MAAMinuteMath, is a continuous source of inspiration for me.)

Finally, nothing piques students’ interest and curiosity better than the history of mathematics itself: My students love building their own website or iBook on any one of those intriguing topics!
 

 Alessandra King, Alessandra.king@holton-arms.edu, studies mathematics with her students at the Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, Maryland. She has taught mathematics and physics at the middle school and high school levels and is interested in creative problem solving, critical thinking, and quantitative reasoning.