Teacher Notes and Instructional Tips

Lesson Launch Ideas

• Present the class with a chaotic messy problem and ask them: What smaller problems do we need to solve before we can solve our main problem?
• Present the class with a similar problem but use a real world scenario that relates to something that the students like.

Teacher Questions & Anticipated Student Responses

• What smaller parts of this big problem can we solve first? Students may say : “We need to figure out the cost of one” , “We need to know how many” or “We need to compare our options”
• What part feels the easiest to start with? Why? Students may say: “The numbers are simple there”, “We already know this part” or “That part looks familiar”
• How does solving this subproblem help us solve the entire thing? Students may say: “It gives us one piece instead of the whole thing” ,” We can use this answer later in the problem” or “It helps us organize our problem”
• What information is missing from the big problem? Students may say: We don’t know the total” , “We don’t have the distance traveled” or “We need the rules”

Differentiation Suggestions

•  Help the students who struggle with organizing , by giving them a pre-made sheet with the subproblems on it and have them put them in order.
• Provide Sentence stems for your questions
• Challenge the advanced learners by having them come up with their own subproblems and have them justify why each one matters to the main problem.

Support:

• • Provide graphic organizers that break the big problem into these categories:
    • Known information
    • Unknown information
    • Subproblems
    • Connections
  • Offer exemplars with one subproblem already solved.
  • Allow students to work in pairs to brainstorm subproblems.

Extend:

• • Ask students to design their own multi-step problem and identify the subproblems.
  • Have students compare two different ways to break the same problem apart.
  • Introduce non-routine problems where subproblems are not obvious so they know that every problem will not look the same or be as easy.

Formative Assessment Tools

• You can use exit tickets: “List two subproblems from today’s task and explain how they help.”
• Quick checks: Students highlight the subproblems in a sample solution.
• Think‑alouds have students verbalize how they broke the problem apart.
• Whiteboard responses: “Write one subproblem you solved.”

Student Reflection Prompts

• Which subproblem was most helpful and why?
• What did you learn about breaking problems into smaller parts?
• Where did you get stuck and how did a subproblem help you move forward?
• How would you explain subproblems to a friend?

What prior knowledge do students need?

Prior to using this strategy students need to know:

• Need to know and have an understanding of multi-step problems
• Need to have the ability to identify known vs. unknown information
• Be familiar with the basic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division)
• Be familiar with visual representations (tables, diagrams, lists)
• Have experience with justifying reasoning

What classroom challenges commonly arise?

• Students could try to solve the whole problem at once and get overwhelmed.
• Students could create too many subproblems or ones that don’t connect.
• Students could struggle to see how subproblems relate to the main goal.
• Students could think subproblems are “extra work” instead of helpful so they are reluctant to do them.
• Students could solve the subproblems but fail to connect them into a final answer.