Productive Struggle

When working with students in math, it is important to engage them in productive struggle.  Through productive struggle, students feel that learning goals are attainable and the effort necessary to attain these learning goals is worthwhile.  It creates a sense of hope and students feel empowered with an increased sense of efficacy.

I love this quote about productive struggle: "Basically, academic rigor is helping kids learn to think for themselves."

If we use the above quote to frame our thinking about how students might approach a math problem, it is important that the teacher not make assumptions about the student's understanding.  Using questions to prompt student thinking is a powerful way to have students use metacognition - thinking about their own thinking.

Some of the questions I frequently use include:

• How might you begin?
• What do you already know?
• What do you need to do next?
• Why did that happen?
• What have you tried?  What happened?
• Show me how this will work on the next problem.
• Why did you ______?
• What do you think will happen?
• What might you try?
• How did you decide this answer is correct?

Answering a student's question with a question of your own allows you - the teacher - to help the student explain his/her thinking and develop his/her understanding of mathematics.