Pass the Problem

Each group does one step of a problem and stops. It moves to the next table, who check that step before adding theirs — so by the end, four groups have built one answer and everybody has had to mark somebody else's work.

Checking is half the task. You cannot add your step until you have decided the one above it is right.

One problem per group. Multi-step questions you already have. Nothing new to write.

Eleven minutes. Three passes and a look at where it went wrong.

A timer for each stage, with what the children do in each · free to try · no sign-up

The sheet it prints — optional

The printable Pass the Problem sheet — an A4 page with one box per step and a space to say where it went wrong.

What is pass the problem?

Pass the problem is a structure for multi-step work in which each group completes only one step and then passes the paper to another group. The receiving group must check the previous step before adding the next. The problem circulates until it is finished, then returns home.

It turns a procedure into an inspection task. In ordinary group work a child who cannot do step two waits for somebody who can; here every group has to read, judge and then extend somebody else's reasoning, which is a harder and more useful job than doing your own from the start.

How do you run it, step by step?

First step (about three minutes). Each group does step one of their own problem and stops. The stopping is the hard part and needs saying twice.
Pass on (about three minutes). Pass to the next table. Read and check what is there, then do the next step.
Pass again (about three minutes). Same again. If a group thinks a previous step is wrong, they say so on the sheet rather than silently fixing it.
Home (about two minutes). Papers return to the group that started them. Is the finished answer right, and if not, where did it go wrong?

Eleven minutes. The going-home stage is the pay-off and it is the one that gets cut, which is a shame because finding the exact step where an answer went wrong is the whole skill.

What kind of problem works?

Anything with three or four genuinely separate steps. Multi-step word problems, a calculation with several stages, an experiment write-up, a piece of extended reasoning in history.

What does not work is a problem where step two is obvious once step one is done — the passing then adds nothing but handling time.

From the classroom

Making groups flag an error rather than silently fix it was the change that made this worth doing. Early on, groups would notice a mistake, quietly correct it, and carry on — which is generous and completely destroys the point, because the group who made the error never found out and the going-home stage had nothing to find. Now the rule is: if you think it is wrong, write why underneath and then carry on from the corrected version. That single instruction turned it from a relay race into a peer-assessment activity. The other thing is stopping after one step. Children hate it and will finish the whole problem if you let them, so I now physically take the sheets at the timer whether they are done or not, and after two or three goes they stop racing. With Year 5 I use three groups, not four — four passes and the sheet gets messy enough that the last group cannot read it.

What usually goes wrong?

Groups finish the whole problem instead of one step. Take the sheets at the timer.
Errors get silently fixed, so nobody learns anything. Require them to write why.
The sheet becomes unreadable after four passes. Three is often better, and one pen colour per group helps.
The going-home stage is cut, removing the reason the problem travelled at all.

Which year groups is it for?

Year group	US grade	What to change	How long
Years 3–4	Grades 2–3	Two steps and two passes. Model the checking out loud first.	8 min
Years 5–6	Grades 4–5	Three passes, errors flagged in writing, going-home stage protected.	11 min
Year 7 and up	Grades 6–8	Plant a deliberate error in one problem and see how far it travels.	15 min

Compared with the other building-on structures

Rotating Stations moves the children rather than the paper, and accumulates ideas rather than steps.
Snowball merges whole answers instead of extending one.
Two Stars and a Wish is the version for judging finished work rather than continuing it.

Free to try · no sign-up · the sheet is optional

Rotating Stations →The same building-on-others idea, but the children move rather than the paper. All 24 cooperative structures →Think Pair Share, Round Robin, Snowball and the rest — each with a timer and a step-by-step.

Written by a practising primary school teacher, and part of the free-to-try Teaching Routines set on Sage Teachers. Last checked August 2026. Everything here is free to try.