Adventures in Pragmatic Problem-Solving: Stories and Language Activities for Children

Ages 5 through 10. Use the short stories and thinking activities in this book to help children develop functional problem-solving skills and effective strategies for communicating when problems are encountered in various situations. The activities help students to verbalize solutions for problems, identify causes, identify consequences of behavior, and recognize the viewpoints of others. Reproducible worksheets are included.

Part 1 of this book includes three types of activities that can be used to develop problem-solving skills.

Activity A - Each of the stories in Activity A includes a picture and a short story in which a problem situation is described. The reproducible answer forms contain questions related to the problems presented in each story.
Activity B - After the student has listened to or read the story, ask him/her to place the pictures in the correct story sequence. Then child also creates an ending for the story by solving a problem.
Activity C - The stories in Activity C require students to react to problems experienced by a character named Ryan during the course of a day.
</ul>

In Part 2, problems presented in short poems are discussed. Students respond to questions related to the problems described. Pictures are included for each activity.

In Part 3, brief descriptions of problems are presented and the child responds to questions about these problems. The following skills are emphasized:

Identifying Causes of Problems.
Identifying Effects of Problems
Evaluating Solutions
Providing Solutions

The problem-solving skills in this book have direct relevance to success in meeting academic standards.