Today I introduced a small group of my students to ‘prompts’. We talked about the idea of them asking the questions. What do they want to know more about? What is interesting or confusing? My go-to site for prompts is Andrew Blair’s inquirymaths.com.
Here’s how it went:
- pairs were given 10 mins with the prompt to discuss and record their thinking using I see, I think, I wonder routine (I stuck with a theme familiar to the students but will later share with them these starters)
- we then shared ideas and recorded them on one poster
- we refined the language, cleared up any misconceptions or answered conceptual questions as we went (eg the difference between volume and area; how do you find the area of a rectangle?) As the questions were posed by the students as they needed the clarification to move forward with the inquiry, there was a far greater investment in listening to and processing the answer!
- each pair then picked what they wanted to investigate
- as the students worked more questions than answers arose
Next steps:
- introduce the students to 3 or 4 of the regulatory cards to help them move forward with their inquiry
- share sentence starters to help focus their questions
Fin out more about using prompts to drive inquiry.
Doing Maths 
