Reviews of Books on Problem Solving

These are more-or-less personal notes on a collection that includes a lot of school books, because I have a particular interest in teaching problem solving.

Kindergarten

Critical Thinking and Self-Awareness

The topic list for these worksheets is:

• Same-Different
• DIrection: Left-Right
• Position: Open-Closed, Upside Down, First - Middle - Last, Under-On, Between-In
• Classifying: Pairs, Things by color, Animals, Food, Music, Light, Senses, Does Not Belong
• Sequencing
• Following Directions
• Opposites
• Predicting Outcome
• Drawing Conclusions
• Finding Incorrect Concepts
• Real and Fantasy
• Self-Awareness: Self, Family, Growing Up, School, Feelings, Health, Safety, Community

First, we have the question of whether all of the non-self-awareness things come under the heading of critical thinking. Personally, I prefer to think of telling left from right as a party trick instead of a critical thinking -- critical thinking would come in at the point where you realize that you should not put helicopters on a worksheet where you're supposed to determine whether the direction of travel is right or left, because helicopters can fly backwards!

The worksheets are about average. A lot of them are puzzling to me (which is the match for soap: towel, shoe, shorts, hairbrush, toothpaste, or soup? The "right" answer is apparently towel, or maybe it's a rectangular washcloth? I got there by elimination, since there is a toothbrush to match the toothpaste which I would otherwise find a better answer), or silly (are you learning anything about grandparents when you follow the letters to their house?) Some also beg the question (for instance, for "under" and "on" you are asked to draw rain under a rain cloud and a cake on the table -- you don't have to understand the words to get them where they're supposed to be, and in fact there's physically no space to draw things in the wrong place). All of the classifying activities use learned categories (wild animals vs. zoo animals, not brown animals vs. striped animals).

Interesting for insight as to what counts as a critical thinking skill for a kindergartener, but not particularly useful.

Problem-Solving Kids: Creating Self-Directed, Problem-Solving Students