Is Solution Fluency Alive and Well in Your Classroom? Review

 Teaching to the test has been the universal flaw of many teachers in today's society. Who can blame some when there is pressure to cover material , curriculum , and fact fluency  interim bench marks. In doing so we have missed the mark in creating an environment for overall growth from all parties involved. We must first take a step back and review the areas upon which teachers create real life applicable problems and this is in the process of "Solution Fluency" 

In mathematics , I look at problems that students can relate to . In Algebra 2 for example, a question that is posed is " What makes the perfect firework? What makes fireworks special? This opens a series of questions from students that look at the whole picture and not just a standard low level answer. The question would extend to the cycle of solution fluency which is define, discover, dream, design, deliver, and debrief. An idea that I have been incorporating in more recent classes is a question of the week. This question can be as broad as the fireworks question but builds upon itself. "Solution Fluency is not a linear process but a cyclical one. At any point in the process, students may be led to retrace their steps" (Crockett, L., Jukes, I., & Churches, A. (2011). Currently my students do not know how to design essential questions but I facilitate discussions around the central topic and use tools such as Google forms and Google chat/breakout rooms to further enhance discussion.  In knowing the process define means understanding what the actual problem is. In the discover stage , individuals try to find out what brought the person to this point. " Discover is our exploration phase. How did we get to this point? " Crockett, L., Jukes, I., & Churches, A. (2011). It also helps understand the problem in a broader aspect. In the Dream stage we now work towards finding the solution, what can work what wont work. From the Dream stage we move to the Design stage . The design stage is the ordered steps to get to  the possible solution. "It becomes the process of gap analysis, breaking out all the necessary steps to get us from here to there." ( Crockett, L., Jukes, I., & Churches, A. , 2011). Deliver is actually trying out the process to see if it works. The last stage is Debrief where we now look at all the necessary information from the first five steps and determine if that plan of action works or not. 

"Could there be another solution or another process to get to that solution"  The 6 D's do not just flow in a linear pattern but in a circle . All phases  are connected with one another and can always be reset at any stage . Of the 6 D's I believe that is most important is the Define stage. In mathematics and problem solving , there are times students do not know what the question is asking of them. Once the discover stage has been realized then once can develop a plan of execution. The dream stage I believe is a difficult stage for many students because many are not creative in their own self evaluation. They believe that at times that there is only one direct route to a solution but it does not necessarily have to be especially in mathematics. Yes there is one answer to 2 plus 2 but there are plenty of answers to the question, what makes the best business model for selling lemonade given the cost  and price of supplies. When one moves to essential questions the ideas that students and teachers must determine is " Is thought-provoking and intellectually engaging, often sparking discussion and debate. Calls for higher-order thinking, such as analysis, inference, evaluation, prediction. It cannot be effectively answered by recall alone." Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (2013).  This is the challenges of solutions fluency and asking essential questions where knowing what questions are considered essential in the process of applying the 6 D's . General one word answers to a question makes a question not essential, however , thought provoking questions that initiates a response and peaks interests is.

 

References:

Crockett, L., Jukes, I., & Churches, A. (2011). Literacy is not enough: 21st-century fluencies for the digital age. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin

 Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (2013). Essential questions: Opening doors to student understanding. ASCD