Pro Tip: Ask Questions That Students Can't Get Wrong

School has started in Oakland USD for my two kids. All my love and energy to their teachers. School is also starting next week in a large urban district where I’m running a professional development study—writing the PD materials, programming the delivery mechanism, conducting the research—that makes me very excited and also has me pretty thinly smashed.

So even though I do my best to assemble some logs, gather kindling, and light the fire around which we gather here, my status right now means that you, dear reader, will need to bring some spark to this one yourself.

Several posts ago I signed a check I’ll cash now:

Remind me to show you a clip another time where San Diego teacher Gen Esmende persuades a student that he knows something very useful when he is sure he does not. Gen resists solving the problem for the student several times because she knows he is one question away from realizing he knows the answer himself. And then he does.

Here is that clip.

I have watched it no fewer than ten times.

There is so much that is so special about it, but in this moment, I’d like to point out the following fact:

It is hazardous to ask questions with right or wrong answers in front of the class.

What do you do when students get them wrong? What do you do when students get them right but for the wrong reasons? What do you do when the identity of the student who is getting the question right or wrong inadvertently encourages other students to overgeneralize about which people are generally right or wrong in math class? What could the two of you talk about that’d be worth the time and rapidly dwindling attention of 30+ other people?

I’m not proscribing the practice, just noting that it comes with risks that aren’t attached to other practices, like just explaining stuff at the board, even though those other practices have risks of their own.

So I’m particularly excited by the question Esmende asks here, a question that is both valuable and impossible for the student, Max, to get wrong:

“Max, what are you realizing?”

However Max answers, he will be correct. He also stands a good chance of helping other students as they think about the same question. And he stands a great chance of helping other students understand that math is a discipline that you think about, one that takes time, one that can change your mind and your ideas.

As I head back to this research project now, I’d love to know other questions you use to de-risk whole-class conversations. Perhaps you know of other valuable questions that students can’t get wrong.