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.
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