Hijacking Students' Thinking

I have been guilty of the three warning signs: Interrupting the child’s strategy, manipulating the tools, and asking a series of closed questions on many occasions.  Thank goodness I have grown in my pedagogy and have taken different approaches to guiding students’ thinking. Although, it is difficult at times to simply highjack a student’s thinking it is imperative not to do so.  You have to know your students and have created a safe environment in which all learners feel validated.  Once you have established a “community of learners” environment in your classroom, you have to develop a way to guide student’s thinking, especially when they are completely off base in a way that the student still understands the problem.  This is definitely key to strengthening students’ problem-solving skills.  I also try to ask open- ended questions such as,” what do you think you should do next?” or “can you explain why you did that?” Often times, once the student starts explaining why they did something they will find their mistake.  On several occasions, students have actually shown me a different approach to solving the problem.

Now, when I catch myself doing any of those things I try to see if there is another way to approach the particular situation.  I agree with the authors of the article that there are times when you can use those techniques you just have to be careful in your approach.