Questioning Strategies to Encourage Discourse

Last time, we explored the teacher-to-student talk ratio during math instructional time. Teachers tend to dominate the conversation, speaking about 80% of the time, when ideally, they should aim for 20%. It's crucial to consider effective strategies for making this adjustment moving forward.

It's important to approach changes to instructional practices thoughtfully and not to overwhelm ourselves with too many modifications at once. Success in implementing change often involves taking incremental steps and setting specific, achievable goals. While adjusting the overall teacher-to-student talk ratio is a valid long-term goal, our current focus should be demonstrating a short-term, measurable "proof of concept."

Let's begin by simplifying our terms. We aim to move toward a 20:80 teacher-to-student talk ratio, meaning we want to get about four times as many words back from a student whenever we say something to them. The most effective way to achieve this is through questioning. Declarative statements, instructions, or directions we give often limit responsiveness, which is fine if that's our intention. However, right now, our goal is to increase student discussion about math, and that only happens when students are presented with open-ended opportunities to hypothesize, critique, or reflect. The only reliable way to generate these opportunities is with a good question.

Now we can simplify the math. If our main goal is to develop a 20:80 teacher-to-student talk ratio, we can simplify this to a 5:20 ratio. I chose this specific reduction because it's easy to think about it this way: "Can I ask a five-word question and get about 20 words in response?" It's a rhetorical question because the answer is "YES!" We frequently ask simple, quick questions. However, most of these questions are “low-level” and designed to elicit one correct response. We need to change our approach and focus on asking five-word questions that might prompt a response that's as close to 20 words as possible.

In an upcoming article, I’ll discuss Math Talk scripts you can keep handy for any time. For now, let's concentrate on the one question that makes the biggest impact: "Can you explain your thinking?"

This open-ended, high-level question doesn't have one single correct answer, encouraging a deep exploration of strategies and ideas. Through my classroom experience (and as a guest teacher in training and coaching), I have noticed that students typically respond with 15-20 words when prompted with this question. In an upcoming article, we will delve into effective ways to pose questions to maximize their impact.