Strategies

Strategies help you solve problems. A strategy is a planned way to reach a goal. You have to give thought to the best kind of strategy to use and, even then, sometimes the strategy doesn't work. If that happens, you must pick a different strategy. Often, more than one strategy will work in solving a problem. It depends on the problem. The important thing is to keep trying. Problem solving takes practice and the more you problem solve and use good thinking, the better you'll become at both problem solving and thinking.

These strategies may help you with problem solving.

Draw a picture or a sketch.

Guess and check the problem.

Act the problem out.

Use materials or manipulatives that will help you solve the problem. Depending on the problem, good materials or manipulatives might be:

paper and pencil

counters - count them, sort them, or group them

hundreds, tens, and ones

ruler

yarn or string for measuring

clock

unifix cubes

blocks

calendar

shapes

coins

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