Theme: Patterns
Focus skills: Recognize and extend patterns; find rules in numbers, shapes, colors, and events.
Strategy spotlight: Find a Pattern; careful reading; pencil marking.
Practice test: Mini pattern set (start in class, finish at home).
Theme: Draw a Picture
Focus skills: Visualize scenarios; sketch to track multi-step processes.
Strategy spotlight: Draw a Picture; Act it Out.
Practice test: Sketch-based word problems (begin diagrams in class, complete at home).
Theme: Work Backwards
Focus skills: Reverse operations; trace from end to start; calendars and clocks backward.
Strategy spotlight: Work Backwards; reverse of +/−/×/÷.
Practice test: Backward-reasoning problems (first half in class, remainder at home).
Theme: Calendar and Time
Focus skills: Read analog clocks; compute durations; day-of-week cycles; month lengths.
Strategy spotlight: Draw a Clock/Calendar; Count On; Make a Table (dates).
Practice test: Mixed calendar/clock set (start timing tasks in class, complete at home).
Theme: Make an Organized List
Focus skills: Exhaustive listing without duplicates; grouping by cases; sequencing.
Strategy spotlight: Organized List; simple casework; path listing.
Practice test: Casework and listing problems (organize in class, finish at home).
Theme: 2D Visualization
Focus skills: Interpret flat figures; count tiles/squares; right/left; missing parts; board coloring.
Strategy spotlight: Add to the Picture; count systematically; Make a Table (counts).
Practice test: 2D figure set (start with two diagrams in class, complete the rest at home).
Theme: Guess and Check
Focus skills: Iterative testing; constraint filtering; parity and sum logic.
Strategy spotlight: Guess–Check–Revise; small tables; elimination.
Practice test: Guess-and-check set (attempt first trials in class, finish at home).
Theme: Make a Table
Focus skills: Organize multi-attribute data; detect patterns; incremental build-up.
Strategy spotlight: Build a Table; find patterns via tables.
Practice test: Table-building problems (set up templates in class, complete at home).
Theme: 3D Visualization
Focus skills: Count cubes; hidden faces/blocks; nets; opposite faces; paint coverage; rotations.
Strategy spotlight: Visualize turns/views; chunking counts; “glue-spot” face accounting.
Practice test: 3D cube/nets set (begin two counting tasks in class, finish at home).
Theme: The 4-Step Method
Focus skills: Apply the complete problem-solving cycle across easy/medium/hard; persistence.
Strategy spotlight: 4-Step Method (Understand, Plan, Solve, Check).
Practice test: MK 2012 comprehensive review (start selected items in class using four steps, complete the full set at home).
