A primary school teacher can encourage children to become effective problem solvers by

Correct Answer: encouraging children to make intuitive guesses and then brainstorming on the same.

Explanation:

To encourage children to become effective problem solvers, primary school teachers should foster an environment that promotes critical thinking, curiosity, and active engagement. Here is a step-by-step breakdown of why encouraging intuitive guesses and brainstorming is the most effective approach:

1. Fostering Intuition and Hypothesis Building: Allowing children to make intuitive guesses helps them activate their prior knowledge and develop hypotheses about a problem without fear of immediately being wrong.

2. Promoting Brainstorming and Critical Thinking: Once intuition leads to an initial guess, brainstorming allows students to explore multiple perspectives, evaluate different strategies, and refine their thinking collaboratively.

3. Why Other Options Are Ineffective:

- Materialistic rewards: Extrinsic rewards can reduce intrinsic motivation and creativity in long-term problem solving.
- Focusing only on procedural knowledge: Relying strictly on memorized procedures limits deep conceptual understanding and adaptability in new problem situations.
- Penalizing incorrect answers: Punishing mistakes creates anxiety and discourages risk-taking, which is essential for creative problem solving.

Therefore, encouraging children to make intuitive guesses followed by collaborative brainstorming builds confidence, analytical skills, and independent problem-solving abilities.