Curriculum Supplement

Future problem solving's structured approach comes to life in the classroom with the materials from its competitive program, but educators can access these resources without participation in the competitions. Teachers and schools seeking to integrate engaging content to teach creative problem solving register for the Curriculum Supplement package.

Value Of Curriculum Supplement

The Curriculum Supplement package can be used to help develop students' research, writing, presentation, and creative problem solving skills based on the structured design of the program. FPS aligns with Common Core State Standards Initiative, STEM, and the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) Gifted Education Programming Standards as well as teach 21st Century Skills.

Whether you are a teacher seeking to add creative problem solving into your lessons or a school seeking to integrate engaging content relating to STEM and problem solving, the curriculum supplement package is an essential tool aimed at helping build problem solving skills for students grades 4-12.

Curriculum Supplement Toolkit

The Curriculum Supplement Package adapts NYFPS' Global Issues Problem Solving (GIPS) component format without requiring the students to participate in the competition. Although you and your students will not attend events such as the State Conference as part of the competition cycle, you will be a part of the NYFPS community and have opportunities to connect professionally with others in our network.

The package offers three key tools which you will be able to leverage:

Six-step problem solving framework.
Case studies.
Evaluation guidance.

Explore these tools:

6-Step Process

A structured and repeatable process to guide students on how to approach creative problem solving in a critical and analytical lens

Future Scenes

Creatively written scenarios based on the yearly topics designed for students to apply the creative problem solving process to realistic case studies

Assessment

Educators can learn and follow our established process on how to evaluate their student's mastery of concepts and to identify areas for improvement

The FPS six-step process builds the foundation for students to approach problem solving in a structured and repeatable lens. In addition to the framework, students learn and practice how to clearly articulate their thoughts within each step by following FPS guidance on how to structure their communication output.

Sample Future Scenes

Teachers will be able to incorporate the Annual Topics into lesson plans by bringing research and discussions to life through case studies (future scenes). Each year FPSPI announces the topics for the school year which will be the basis for the thematic cores for the case studies. You will be able to teach students how to conduct research and explore these topics, which are themes expected to increasingly become more important in the near future. These topics represent themes and concepts from the strands of Business & Economics, Social & Political, and Science & Technology. FPSPI offers a range of teaching and research materials related to reach topic annually; the NYFPS team can provide experienced guidance regarding which products would best fit your needs. Explore recent topic examples here.

Evaluation Scoresheet

It is important to be able to measure how well students understand concepts and assess whether they can effectively apply lessons learned; FPS' formalized evaluation guidelines can provide you the tool to measure your students' progress. You will be able to score your students on each step of the 6-step framework based on clearly established criteria from which your students can learn how to improve. The scoresheet below applied to your students' work can serve as a catalyst for discussions on strengths and weaknesses of their applied learning. Additionally, you can discuss with the NYFPS team about the available evaluation guideline resources that would help you assess your students' work.

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Why Bring Curriculum Supplement Into My Classroom?

Educators can leverage the six-step problem solving framework to help develop students' critical problem solving skills and understand analytical approaches. It is a good opportunity to introduce younger students and earlier grade level classes to a creative problem solving framework without having to engage within a competitive environment yet.

This component of the program is a useful resource for schools which seek to have a structured approach to teaching problem solving throughout the year without having to fully commit to the competitive nature of the other components in the program until they are ready.

Discover more about how to integrate FPS into your classroom instruction here. To better understand the resources which comes with the Curriculum Supplement Package and how it can be a tool in your classroom send an email to our Executive Director for more details.