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Problem Solving Strategies

What can you do if you are having a difficult time solving a problem?

	Strategy	How does this help me?
1.	Draw a picture	Helps you visualize or see the relationship
2.	Make a table	Helps me when there are 2 or more quantities or when the amounts change using a pattern.
3.	Look for a pattern	Helps when you are looking for something that repeats in a predictable way.
4.	Make an organized list	Helps when you are asked to find combinations of two or more items.
5.	Try, Check, Revise	Helps when quantities are being combined to find a total, but you don’t know which quantities.
6.	Write an equation	Helps when a story describes a situation that uses and operation or operations.
7.	Act it out	Helps when numbers are small and there is action in the problem that you can do.
8.	Use prior knowledge to connect with the new information	Helps when you need to find one part of a problem.
9.	Work backwards	Helps when you know the end result of a series of steps or you want to know what happened at the beginning.
10.	Solve a simpler problem	Helps when you are able to solve a simpler problem and then apply the process to the more complex one.
11.	Make a graph	Helps to show data for an event or a particular question that would be better shown on a graph.

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