Use Sudoku to teach Growth Mindset and Character Building
Teach students to develop a growth mindset by using Sudoku puzzles to explicitly teach problem-solving strategies and perseverance strategies.
Right now, we’re in the final stages of publishing our lesson plan about Character Building (Learning Skills). One of the activities uses Sudoku as an opportunity to try strategy-based learning and to conscientiously think about being in a growth mindset.
In other words, we’re going to practice what we learned about growth mindsets by doing Sudoku puzzles!
TEACHER TALK: We strategically chose Sudoku to be part of this Character Building package because…
- You use strategies to become better at solving Sudoku puzzles
- Sudoku allows for easy differentiation in your class. There is a wide range of Sudoku puzzles ranging from super easy to ridiculously hard. This allows a wide spectrum of students to get into the zone. Find a puzzle that’s not too easy, and not too hard. (Zone of Proximal Development.)
- Answers are provided, so it’s easy for students to self-check and then move onto another puzzle of the same difficulty, or try a harder level.
- This is an opportunity to struggle and develop character. Eventually, everyone hits a wall where it becomes hard to solve a puzzle. This is an opportunity to struggle and try perseverance strategies until we finally break through and solve the puzzle, and by doing so, master new strategies and develop character.
- It’s easy (and tempting) to cheat – this provides an opportunity to talk about fixed mindsets. There are lots of free programs that let you type in the numbers of a puzzle and have the computer automatically generate the answer. This is fantastic because copying down the answers and moving onto the next puzzle isn’t the point. It doesn’t help you develop resilience or logical thinking. You won’t be better at solving Sudoku puzzles just because you can copy answers onto your page. If you were given a “sudoku test” where you weren’t allowed to use a computer
Sudoku provides a great analogy for learning at school.
Sometimes, students are assigned questions for homework and we simply copy answers from the back of the textbook, or we copy answers from a friend, or we google the answer.
If you copy down the answer for a sudoku puzzle from the answer page, are you any better at solving a Sudoku puzzle independently, next time? When puzzles get frustrating, do you have coping strategies to help you get through tough times?
Sometimes work seems meaningless, but you still have to do it. Can you find strategies to help you find the joy or a positive attitude in doing it?
Sudoku provides an opportunity to develop a GROWTH MINDSET.
A growth mindset comes when we realize that using strategies and effort can help us improve. During the work periods, we will have a few phrases posted on the slideshow to help put people into a growth mindset
As teachers walk around the class providing just in time support to struggling students, we suggest different levels of hints for students (scaffolded support):
- Find a number that the student hasn’t unlocked yet on their puzzle.
- Stage 1 support: Give the student the name of a strategy that will unlock that answer
- Stage 2 support: Tell them which box (or row or column) to look at
- Stage 3 support: Work through the strategy with them step-by-step.
- Notice at no point, do we simply give them the answer to a cell. Instead, we provided them with help in applying strategies.
What if you’re not great at Sudoku puzzles yourself? No problem!
TEACHER TIP: Students who are really good at Sudoku could help others by providing them with Stage 1, 2, or 3 clues. And then this provides these students with practice explaining strategies and reflecting on how strategies help us. (It’s all about making the hidden thinking, more visible!)
The point of this lesson is to develop strategies to persevere and keep at a task when the going gets tough.
The point of this activity is not to become Sudoku experts, although developing logical thinking is always a nice thing. (Hmm, now that I think about it, developing communication and collaboration skills to problem solve a puzzle together is also a good skill set to have.)
The point of this activity is to build character through tough times!
Some teachers will choose to do Sudoku as a 5-minute bell work activity at the start of class. This is a great extension of the lesson so that this package isn’t simply a one-off activity at the start of the year. Here’s how it could work:
Week 1: Do the character lessons in this package
- LESSON 1 – Activity #1 What do you believe Self Assessment Handout / Growth Mindset vs Fixed Mindset
- LESSON 2 – Activity #2 Sudoku – Round 1 and Round 2
- LESSON 3 – Sudoku continued – Round 3 and Round 4
- LESSON 4 – Sudoku continued – Round 5 / Video 1
- LESSON 5 – Videos continued
- LESSON 6 – Playing with words handout
- LESSON 7 – Self Evaluation / Review
Week 2 and on: Sudoku (Growth Mindset) Bellwork
- Bellwork: students work on Sudoku puzzles while you do attendance, collect paperwork.
- Accountability piece – different focus question per day:
- Discuss with a partner a Sudoku strategy that worked (or didn’t work) for you. Explain the strategy, and then explained how you used it and why it worked (or didn’t work.).
- Discuss with a partner a perseverance (overcoming obstacles) strategy that worked (or didn’t work) for you. Explain the strategy, and then explained how you used it and why it worked (or didn’t work.).
- Discuss with a partner a statement you said to try to encourage a growth mindset. Explain the statement, and then explained how you used it and why it worked (or didn’t work.).
- On the last day of the week, students could write a paragraph response – which could be used towards assessment information for learning skills, paragraph writing, etc.
Sudoku Resources Included in the Character (Learning Skills) package:
We have provided the following PDFs
- 21 puzzles with 9 different difficulty levels:
- Very Easy (3 puzzles)
- Easy (3 puzzles)
- Moderate (3 puzzles)
- Hard (3 puzzles)
- Very Hard (3 puzzles)
- Expert (3 puzzles)
- Fiendish (1 puzzle)
- Diabolical (1 puzzle)
- Serpentine (1 puzzle)
- 21 puzzle SOLUTIONS
- Sudoku puzzle example (and solution) used in the slideshow
Materials / Lesson Prep:
Materials / Lesson Prep:- Photocopy a class set of the Sudoku Slideshow Example (whole class example)
- Print out 1 copy of the solutions
- Print out a copy of the Sudoku Slideshow Example – solution (for teacher, or you can post at the back of the room)
- Print out a copy of the Sudoku Handout – SOLUTIONS (to post at the back of the room)
- Prepare student packages of Sudoku puzzles
- Option 1: Photocopy enough puzzles to keep in buckets at the front of class. Students get a puzzle, and when they finish it, move on to the next puzzle.
- TEACHER TIP: We prefer this option because it’s less intimidating doing one puzzle at a time. Also, if students lose their handout, they haven’t lost the entire package.
- Option 2: Each student gets a stapled booklet of all 21 puzzles.
- TEACHER TIP: This can be good so students aren’t wasting time going up and finding the next puzzle.
Where do your Sudoku resources come from? Are you Sudoku experts?
Nope! We’re not sudoku experts by any means. But, as teachers, we love finding resources and figuring out ways to deliver the content to our students!
There are a lot of great resources on the internet. We discovered we really, really, really liked Sudoku Snake ( www.sudokusnake.com ) – All of the Sudoku puzzles and screenshot were generated by Sudoku Snake.
They have a great resource page with beginner strategies that we’ve adapted in this slideshow. But they also have many more difficult and complex strategies posted here: http://www.sudokusnake.com/techniques.php
TEACHER TIP: If you have students who are incredibly good at Sudoku (or even if they’re not good at Sudoku), why not send them to the Sudoku Snake resource page and have them learn a new strategy. Even, better, get them to present it to the class!
Free Sudoku Puzzle Application Program
Sudoku Snake has a free downloadable program. You can download the full version for free from their homepage. We used it to create our Sudoku puzzle handouts that are included in this package, but you could use it, or another Sudoku generator to generate more.
- TEACHER TIP: If you teach with a projector, you could download the program onto your teacher computer and solve problems as a class using the program. (The Sudoku snake program has both a generate / design mode, as well as a solve mode. This way, when students suggest candidates and possibilities for the different cells, rather than writing in small chalk numbers, the program lets you type in little red numbers in the cell.
- TECHNICAL TIP: We use Windows 10 on our laptop and had some difficulty installing Sudoku Snake which was designed for an older version of Windows. If you right-click the installer file, you get the option called “PROGRAM COMPATIBILITY TROUBLESHOOTER” – This lets us install the program as a “Windows Vista (Service Pack 2)” program and it works fine for us now.
How did you figure out how difficult a Sudoku Puzzle is?
We wanted to make sure students could find a Sudoku puzzle that was in their Proximal Zone of Development. In other words, not too easy, and not too hard. (This way, they could struggle through an obstacle and hopefully persevere and emerge on the other side victorious!)
We really liked the explanation of how Sudoku Snake ranked puzzle difficulty. We used their rating system (from Very Easy to Serpentine) in our Character package. You can read about the challenges of rating Sudoku puzzle difficulty here: http://www.sudokusnake.com/ratingsystem.php
Note: As per the License Terms in the Sudoku Snake software, any puzzles generated, solved, or rated by this software may be distributed by the press or any media to any extent insomuch as proper reference is made to Sudoku Snake. ‘Proper reference’ shall be defined as the accompaniment of a statement that the puzzle was generated, solved or rated by Sudoku Snake, and said statement shall be included in the printing, publishing, distribution or presentation of said puzzle. ‘Rated’ shall be defined as the printing, publishing, distribution or presentation of the skill level of said puzzle as calculated or determined by Sudoku Snake. An acceptable example of proper reference is as follows: ‘Rated by Sudoku Snake, www.sudokusnake.com’
