Problem Sizing

"Hot dogs?  I HATE hot dogs!" (Student yells and refuses to join his peers for lunch.)

"But it's pink pants Monday, mom.  I can't wear gray pants!"  (Child refuses to get dressed and lays in her bed throwing a tantrum.)

"This is the worst day ever!  I'm going to fail fourth grade!"  (Student manages to mumble through sobs because he forgot to finish his science homework.)

These scenarios and countless others are regular occurrences when problem solving with our students.  For some students, many problems are catastrophic for them, causing anxiety and worry.  For other students,
significant problems, especially others' problems, are sometimes shrugged off as "no big deal."  It's not out of spite or malicious intent.  It's completely innocent.

So I needed an activity to help them practice the skill of identifying the size of a problem.  I needed to have lots of practice problems.  I needed some type of manipulative.  I needed something that they all could relate to.  Then it hit me.  French fries.  Yes, you got it.  French fries.

All of the students in my group love French fries.  The minute I took the activity out, they began to talk about French fry particulars: where they like to eat them, whose mom makes the best fries, and who eats the most.  (It was only 9:15, but I was already craving fries.)  I presented three separate French fry cartons, labeled "small," "medium," and "large."

A social problem was written on each fry.  I began the activity, and it didn't taken long for me to realize it was bombing.  The students could not identify the size of a problem even when given the easiest of scenarios and a crazy amount of prompting.  Then my colleague said, "Can you make a visual to help them identify the problem?"  Of course!

I went to what I knew: Michelle Garcia Winner.  She makes the concept of identifying the size of the problem very concrete through her Superflex® curriculum, and Jill Kuzma has fantastic visuals (found here) for identifying the size of a problem using a five-point continuum.  I love using Jill's visuals, and they have worked with nearly all of my groups until this year.  I needed something simpler, a three-point continuum.

After a short explanation of the continuum, the students slowly began to label the size of the problems.  Of course, there was some prompting, but they were getting it!  As more problems were presented, they began to independently reference the size of the problem continuum AND label the size of the problems.  Woot!

I really love this activity, and so do the students.  They are so motivated by the French fries and placing them in to the correct size carton.  We are planning to tape the size of the problem continuum visual to the top of their desks so that they can start to reference it when problems arise outside of social skills to support generalization.

Our next step, which will be must later, will be to match the size of the reaction to the size of the problem and relate it to the Zones of Regulation® by Leah Kuypers.  

If you'd like to grab a copy of this activity, you can find it here at our TpT store.