Weekly Writing Oct. 14

The problem solving technique is one that is not completely familiar to me. I know I have done this in class at times, but the articles had so many good ideas and items that help reveal to me how much students actually grow using PST. To understand the steps, and mindset of students, was a great starting place. I was able to write down the steps to teaching PST. They are:

1. Interest Approach
2. Objective to be achieved
3. Questions to be answered
4. Problem Solution:
       define possible solutions
       acquire new knowledge, skill, and equipment
       formulate conclusions and general principles
5. Testing solutions through application
6. Evaluation of solutions

It was helpful for me to write these down, especially because I have to do a lesson plan and lab experience on PST. I have started to realize that being a teacher means that you shouldn't always have to spoon feed information to students. You should be there only to facilitate the learning, and not just have students follow. The problem solving technique, to me, feels like it can be intimidating at times. There are many different parts to PST, and if some parts are not done correctly, the whole lesson could be thrown off. Making sure the questions to be solved are appropriate, understanding prior knowledge, and having the right amount of transfer knowledge are just a few of the items needing consideration when trying this technique.

Using the problem solving technique is a great way to get students to engage in a topic of interest, and follow it all the way through. Creating intermediate goals allows for appropriate feedback, and using scaffolding techniques can help as well to create an easier learning process with different variations of learning. I believe the main goal of PST is to understand the process, from an educator and student perspective, while making the problem as relevant as possible to the students.