Girls can be great problem solvers but it doesn’t always come naturally to them. Their innate desire to get it right first time in order to avoid making mistakes can prevent them from being inventive and taking risks based on curiosity or creativity. This is certainly what we discovered when we set problem solving challenges in the past for our pupils at Norwich High Prep School for Girls. They had a tendency to focus on making it look right rather than work well, putting more time and effort into making a rocket with well placed fins, a cone nose and glitter (always an essential!) rather than ensuring it made a successful journey into the air.
Although our girls enjoyed their Science lessons, we decided they needed more opportunities to learn how to solve problems to gain the skills and attributes they so clearly needed. So we introduced STEM lessons into the curriculum and built our own programme of work to help our girls become successful problem solvers but, this was just the beginning.