Do you remember sitting in a classroom and the teacher calling on different people to share the answer to the question? You’d feel really awkward, look at the floor, around the room, desperately avoid eye contact and hope it wasn’t your name that was chosen. The teacher would call someone else to share and you’d breath a sign of relief. What happened after that? Did the teacher get the answer they wanted and move on? Maybe they just called on the next person until they got the right answer. But, is the answer always important? Not necessarily. The answer is typically the final product to a task. However, a whole process of learning took place to get that final answer. This is the important part.
How does an answer become the answer?
Well, we start by thinking about what we know, making connections to other pieces of information we have and then use our problem solving skills to try to make sense of the content we are presented with and then begin to piece the missing parts of the puzzle together. Often, this is done so quickly in our subconscious that we ‘just know’ the answer, but we don’t know how or why we know. When we struggle with this part, we need guidance and support to fill in the blanks of how we got there. Giving kids the answer doesn’t allow them to think for themselves, think critically or problem solve. It stops them from sorting through the information they have in their heads, analysing its importance and relevance and then coming to a formulated solution. So your job is to guide them through this method until they are able to do this for themselves. Well, how do we support them without giving them the answer? We prompt their thinking with questions. Open ended questions, (where the response is not simply yes or no, instead it is detailed and elaborated on), forces the person responding to think deeply about what they know. They must reflect on the information they have and connect it to other knowledge. It allows them to explain the process and how they formulated their final response. It ensures that each piece of information is thought about, analysed for its usefulness and then sorted and connected together.
When prompting learners, start by asking questions like:
‘what do you already know?’
‘what information can you see in front of you?
‘what is the question asking you?’
This helps the learner feel empowered because they can identify the knowledge they have and it gives them a place to begin in their thought process. If they are quiet and seem to be taking a while, that’s okay, this just means they’re thinking. Don’t jump in to save them, let them take their time. Struggling is learning curve that helps teach persistence and determination. Allowing children to struggle sets the expectation that they need to have a go before seeking support. This forces them to attempt to move through the questioning process independently, showing that they are thinking deeply. Often, starting to move through a problem is the hardest part because there is so much information to process. Knowing where to begin can be overwhelming so be patient.
Depending on their response to your original questions, you might branch off and ask them questions specifically related to their answers. You might ask them questions like ‘can you tell me more about …’ or ‘how did you know/solve …?’. Sometimes you might need guide them to explore something specific to help them connect relevant pieces of information together. But, don’t give them the answer, you are the facilitator who is there to guide the process. As learners are lead along a path of thinking, they will connect what they know to new information to make sense of the topic. This might be a time where you see them reach the ‘ah ha’ moments or it be a time where you will both identify gaps in their knowledge and other areas to work on too. Questioning allows students to be creative and imaginative in their thinking. It gives them the chance to explore this new information rather than the content being delivered in a rigid, matter of fact, inflexible way. Again, it is okay if learners are struggling and taking time to formulate their answers. Keep questioning them and prompting their thinking to guide their thoughts.
As the learner’s knowledge comes together you can then ask them questions to get them to think even more deeply. For example, you could ask ‘can you explain your thinking?’, ‘how did you work that out?’ or ‘how else could you do this?’. You are challenging them to reflect on how they came to their answer which is helpful to guide them through future problem solving experiences. By asking these kinds of questions they are genuinely evaluating their understanding. You can then ask them questions where their knowledge needs to be applied to a new or different situation. By doing so, this allows the learner to use their understanding in different contexts by explaining their knowledge in multiple ways, showing a true connection to what they have learnt. If a learner can’t explain this in different ways, try guiding them through a range of approaches to expand their comprehension of the learning. When someone can explain their thinking in detail, you can see that they fully understand the concept they are describing.
Sometimes the answer is completely irrelevant, the process of how a child’s thinking develops is the most important part! Exploring the ways a learner thinks will allow you to guide their problem solving and critical thinking abilities. It helps them piece together related information in a guided setting and can identify where misunderstandings or gaps in a child’s learning are. Helping children to problem solve by questioning is encouraging and provides them with an opportunity to learn how to learn and how to approach new tasks in the future. Sometimes, a line of questioning will take you down a completely new path or investigation and you learn something completely off topic. But, nonetheless they are still learning.
The most important part is not the answer, but how you got there.
