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Bought this at a conference like 3 years ago. Finally got around to reading it. It's quite good.
So I was thinking about *how* i listen to student answers / contributions to whole class discussions.
Often I get answers that are more a guess without having fully engaged with my question. Especially from students who are not very confident. And I was thinking how I could deal with these.
Obviously it might say something about my classroom culture. (interestingly, I feel like I got more students willing to engage when I was able to dedicate time building culture and norms.)
Anyway, thought I had was I could get in the habit of asking students how confident they were with their answer (without implying correctness) and to make it clear it is okay to share an answer that i you are unsure about or is more of a guess.
By letting the student acknowledge it was a guess it might make it safer / then more comfortable to engage in discussion about it.
Then we can discuss why they chose their particular guess.
Then we can discuss why they chose their particular guess.
If we were solving a linear equation (10-x=2x+1) it might be as simple as "we always take things from both sides, I saw an x so I guessed -x". There's lots of knowledge in here already. Or /2 because "we had 2x in the last example and divided by 2".
I think I would often then *interrogate* them further to "guide" them to a more "correct" answer. But I don't think that's useful. Not in a whole class discussion. That's better 1 on 1 later on. getting them to "explain" their guess is probably sufficient.
This thread was really just for me to jot my thinking. Anyway, I should probably just read the formative assessment book.
