The Value of Multiple Solutions
Richard Kalman · Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School · 2004
All too often, a simple exercise IS dressed up with a few words, designed to look like it might interest a young student, and called “a problem.” These affectations do not make it a problem. A problem should not just force a student to decode words but must “unleash the thinking part of my brain,” one elementary school student said when describing the questions asked on competitions created by the Mathematical Olympiads for Elementary and Middle Schools. A problem is a question for which the reader has no clear-cut algorithm or procedure already in place.