Episode Summary
Solving problems on their own is a common struggle with kindergarteners. In this episode, I discuss teaching students essential problem-solving strategies, focusing on fostering independence. I categorize problems into small, medium, and big, guiding you on empowering students to manage minor issues on their own. Practical techniques include the “bug and a wish” framework for resolving conflicts and the “ask three before me” method for peer assistance.
“Students need to learn how to solve their own problems, because we’ve all experienced it where we are giving directions, we send the kids off to go work, and then everyone comes to you with a problem, and it’s usually a problem that they can solve themselves.”
– Zeba ~ Ep. 57 Teaching Problem Solving Skills
In this episode, I share:
- Importance of Independence in Problem Solving
- Encouraging Independence with “Ask Three Before Me”
- Teaching Problem Sizes for Emotional Regulation
- Additional Resources and Support
Resources Mentioned:
- Social Emotional Learning Year-Long Kindergarten Curriculum Bundle
- Teaching Problem Solving Skills: A Social Emotional Learning Unit
- A Bug and a Wish
- What To Do When a Child Cries All The Time: A Kindergarten Cafe Workshop (TPT)
Problem Solving
Social Emotional Learning BUNDLE
Workshop: What to do When a Child Cries All the Time
Connect with Zeba:
- Instagram – @kindergartencafe
- Facebook – @kindergartencafe
- Website – www.kindergartencafe.org
- Tik Tok – @kindergartencafe
Read the Transcript
[0:00] Hey teacher friends, it’s Zeba from Kindergarten Cafe, and two episodes ago we were talking about helping kids regulate their emotions, their big emotions, and I talked about teaching students how to solve their own problems. I talked about how some students that have big emotions and big reactions need to learn problem-solving strategies. They need to learn how to handle small problems. So I’m going to get into that more today by teaching you how you can teach your students problem-solving strategies. So let’s get into it.
[0:34] Music. You’re listening to the Kindergarten Cafe podcast, where kindergarten teachers come to learn classroom-tested tips and tricks and teaching ideas they can use in their classroom right away. I’m Zeba, creator and founder of Kindergarten Cafe, and I help kindergarten teachers with everything they need from arrival to dismissal in order to save time, work smarter, not harder, and support students with engaging and purposeful lessons. I’m here to cheer you on through your successes and breakthroughs and offer support and resources so you never have to feel stuck or alone. Ready to start saving time and reducing your stress, all while using effective and purposeful lessons that students love? Let’s get started.
[1:28] Students need to learn how to solve their own problems because we’ve all experienced it where we are giving directions, we send the kids off to go work, and then everyone comes to you with a problem.
[1:41] And it’s usually a problem that they can solve themselves. So we need to help kids be more independent by going over the different kinds of problems, small, medium, and large, how to identify what kind of problem it is, and then how the small and medium problems can be solved on their own, whereas big problems really need adult help. And it’s important for them to realize that they can get helper problems, but there are certain problems that they can solve on their own, that they can be independent, and it feels good to be independent. So the first thing I do when I’m teaching problem solving to my students is I am teaching them about those size of the problems. I’m teaching them about small problems, medium problems, and big problems, and how small problems can be solved by them. Medium problems might need a strategy, might need another kid to help, might maybe need a teacher, but big problems are absolutely need adult help. Like we should not even try to solve them on our on our own, we need to get adults to help. So an example of that is like a tree fell on the playground and we need to not only get the teacher, but then the teacher needs to get the principal and the principal needs to get the fire department or the, you know, DBW to come take the tree off the playground. And it’s not up to the kids to go and try and take the tree out of the playground.
[3:01] Whereas a more medium problem is maybe you need a teacher to help mediate a problem between two friends, or you, you know, ripped up your paper by accident, like it’s your toilet paper by accident. And so you do need your teacher to give you new paper, but it’s a very simple fix, right? Whereas a small problem can be completely solved on their own. So I could turn that same problem into a small problem by saying the kids could just get tape and tape up the paper themselves. A small problem would be like their pencil broke. Oh, they can go get another pencil, or they can go sharpen the pencil, whatever the routines are in your class.
[3:38] Dealing with, like, they took my marker. Okay, well, that could be a small problem because all you have to say is, can you give me that marker back? And then they’d be like, oh, I didn’t know I took it from you. Here you go. That could be a totally small problem. Where it could escalate to a medium problem is when the child says, no, I’m not giving it back. And then you kind of need the teacher to help solve that problem. So we go over these different types of problems. We go over the different scenarios and we sort them into the different categories. And then we talk about like the reaction and how to solve the problem. And we definitely want to make clear that small problems really need small reactions. Reactions that big problems get really big reactions and that’s fine right because if a tree fell on the playground that would be a big deal if you fell on the playground and hurt your arm really badly and you’re crying really really loudly like yeah that’s a big problem you’re gonna need to go to the doctor like of course or the nurse that’s a big problem so talking about the reactions is important and connecting the reactions to the size the problem and teaching these reactions and the problem-solving strategies, it really empowers kids to feel like, oh, I don’t need an adult to help me with every little thing. Like, I can solve this on my own.
[5:00] It’s really empowering, especially for these young children who are looking for more control over their lives. They’re looking to take more ownership over everything.
[5:09] This is one of those chances, right? And so we want to teach them this because they want to learn it, but also because it helps you out when they’re solving their own problems and because it’s just good life skills for them to have.
[5:22] So the medium problems are where we want to teach different strategies for problem solving with their peers, like during partner work, the collaboration. I got to share that previous episode. So teaching ways like doing rock, paper, scissors to figure out who goes first to compromise.
[5:40] And then small problems would need more like mindset strategies of like, oh, I can just try that again. Or, oh, I can just go get a different pencil. Instead of spending 20 minutes looking for a new pencil or trying to sharpen your, you know, I use writing pens during writing. So instead of spending 20 minutes trying to find your special writing pen that you can’t find, you could solve that problem really fast by just going to get a pencil and being flexible and using a pencil for the day and then later asking a teacher when they’re available, can I have a new writing pen? And that’s a very specific example because it comes from the class and the kids recognize it as like, oh, I’ve had that problem before, right? So anytime we can go over those simple problems and go over, oh, it’s a very small problem. Here’s some strategies we can do that. Like the kids take, soak that in like a sponge and use that when they’re coming across these problems. And if they’re not, it’s very easy for you, since you’ve already taught it, for you to say, hey, remember, is that a small problem or a big problem? Oh, okay, that sounds good.
[6:46] So what are we going to do about it? Instead of doing it for them, you’re just asking the questions to prompt them to remember the lesson you’ve already taught them. One really helpful problem-solving strategy for more social situations is teaching students a bug and a wish. This is not my idea. It came from a book, a bug. You can get the book, A Bug and a Wish. And what it is is the perfect sentence frame for telling students, telling other friends, other kids what’s bothering them.
[7:18] So the sentence frame is, it bugs me when I wish you would. A bug and a wish. We talked about how a bug is like saying something’s annoying you. So it bugs me when you take my marker. marker, I wish you would give it back. Or it bugs me when you hog all the markers, I wish you would share. And so the kids can easily fill in the situation with what’s bothering them. Because nine times out of 10, kids are so in their own world, they do not even realize that what they’re doing is bothering the other person. And then their other kid comes up and is like, they took my marker.
[7:56] It’s like, well, did you even ask for it back? Did they know that that was your marker? Did they know that that was bothering you? No. Oh, well, go try that. So once you’ve taught them the bug and the wish, you can just say, oh, go try a bug and a wish. You don’t even need to get involved unless it escalates to the point of the kid, you know, not giving the marker back and, you know, stuff like that. But most times, 9 out of 10, the kids say, oh, sorry, here you go, give the marker back. Or the kid is singing loudly and the kids are saying it bugs me when you sing at the top of your lungs. I wish you would be quiet during work time. Then they stop just like that. So that is a really good way to teach them to to solve their own problems, I highly recommend that resource. And that’s important problem solving for in-between friends. I use it all the time. When you do introduce it, definitely tell the parents about it because they’re going to hear it and be very confused because it’s not like the most intuitive statement without knowing the context. It really works well too when everyone in the same grade learns the same vocabulary because then at recess they can use it too. and you can share with any of the teachers that are out at recess. Like, hey, if they’re complaining about someone not listening to them or someone not playing well with them, encourage them to use a bug and a wish.
[9:14] Another really good problem solving strategy and independent strategy to teach students is ask three before me. I use this all the time and it’s really to encourage them solving their own problems and to encourage independence where if they need help with opening a snack container or zipping up their jacket or packing up their backpack, I’ll often say, ask three before me. I especially do it during snack time because I just can’t be opening everyone’s snack containers at the same time. And then the kids get really used to it. Like, oh, automatically before even asking a teacher, they go and ask three other kids to help them open the water bottles. Obviously, sometimes water bottles are really tricky to open and they do need an adult, but they’ve asked three kids first, then I know that they did their best and they tried to solve the problem on their own. And then they can ask a teacher for help. And that’s what we’re here for. We’re here to help them. But we do want to teach them how to solve those problems first.
[10:11] Teaching students how to solve problems is so important for independence, responsibility, problem solving. But teaching students to identify the size of the problem is especially helpful for students who have those big emotional outbursts. And for kids who are crying all the time, like it might not be a big emotional outburst, but they might just cry at every little thing. We’ve all had these students in our class where the water bottle spills, they’re crying. They rip their paper, they’re crying. They write their name wrong because they smudged the pencil, they’re crying. And so teaching them that those are really small problems and they can fix them right away on their own is critical. And again, it’s not, I said this with the emotional regulation podcast episode, it’s, It’s not a quick fix. But over time, they start to realize, oh, wait, I’m crying at a small problem. Or they can start to cry and you can literally just say, wait, is that a small problem or a big problem? And they’ll be like, oh, small problem.
[11:17] Okay. And then they stop crying. It takes time to get there, right? And so in the meantime, they’re crying and you’re saying, oh, the pencil broke. Oh, so frustrating.
[11:26] But wait, is that a small problem or a big problem? problem oh it’s a small problem we can just go get a different pencil let’s go do that right you’re acknowledging that yes it is frustrating but it’s a simple problem to solve you’re not diminishing how they’re feeling but you’re teaching them that they don’t have to get so upset because it’s a very simple problem to solve and so it doesn’t have to the problem doesn’t have to last if you’re looking for more help on what to do when a child cries all the time i have a whole workshop workshop available on that that you can check out.
[11:56] And so I’ll put the link in the show notes. If you’re looking for more help on teaching problem solving strategies, I have a whole unit on Teachers Pay Teachers on this and my website. So you can get all the sorting activities about, you know, small problem, medium problem, big problem, stuff like that, and other resources there as well. So if you’re looking for more individual help, I want to remind you that I do 30-minute coaching calls with teachers where we can talk through all the problems of your individual students and how to problem solve that, how to work through that. Over my 11 years of teaching, I’ve probably seen it all. I’d like to say I don’t want to jinx myself, though, because who knows what I could see next year. But, you know, I definitely have a lot of help to give, and it’s easier to be more specific when I hear your individual problem. And these podcast episodes are great for being more generic to help everyone with this topic. So that’s always available to you. And yeah, send me a message on Instagram to let me know you listened. Say problem solving as your code word and share this episode with a friend who could use it who’s another kindergarten teacher. That’d be great.
[13:08] Thanks so much. Oh my gosh. This is going to become like a thing where I forget every time. The quote of the day. Six-year-old girl said, I love a racing. It’s an interesting thing to love, but I love that she loves a racing. That’s great for her and a great problem-solving skill. So I hope you enjoyed and we’ll see you in the next episode.
[13:32] Thanks so much for listening to the Kindergarten Cafe podcast. Be sure to check out the show notes for more information and resources, or just head straight to kindergartencafe.org for all the goodies. If you liked this episode, the best ways to show your support are to subscribe, leave a review, or send it to a friend. I’ll be back next week with even more kindergarten tips. See you then.