Enabling prompts or life lines are a fantastic way of helping students who are stuck to get started.
They do not reduce the complexity of the question, but they do help kids to get an idea.
Here are a few of my favourites!
Here is the answer… find how to get it
Simply give students the answer and ask them to work backwards to prove why this is right. This prompt is particularly effective for reducing anxiety for student who are worried about being wrong.
Here is a wrong answer… prove that it’s wrong
This works the same way as the last one but is even less scary. Plus, disproving a wrong answer has the added benefit of giving students an opportunity to develop their own idea to try next.
Would one of the flexible strategies help?
- Relationship table
- Array
- Number line
- Partition it
- Horizontal format
- Of a dollar
- Fractions are division
- Place value chart
- Post-it note algebra
- Spreadsheet algebra
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Two lies and a truth
Here are three possible answers. Prove any two of them are wrong.
Note: sometimes I give two wrong and one right, but it is also fun to give three wrong ones!
Top and Tail
Give me an answer that you know is not enough… how close can you get?
Now give me an answer that you know is too much…
This strategy is excellent for creating a “reasonable range” of possibilities, which encourages both estimation and number sense.
Partition it – what is missing?
- Do we have the parts?
- How many parts do we need?
- Do we have the whole?
- How could we find what is missing?
Prove and disprove in pairs
- Write all the conjectures up on the board.
- Form pairs. Pick any three to prove or disprove.
- You get a point for each one.
If you did…
Finally, the one that drives me crazy because it shouldn’t work… but it is weirdly effective.
If you did know what to do, what would you do?
Seriously, try it.