Questions to Ask When Helping a Student

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General Questions to Ask Your Student
To support this learning, it is best to not do homework problems for your student, even if this is accompanied by an explanation. Instead we suggest you ask questions like those below. Questions such as these work to enhance learning and success, whether the homework question is very basic, or very complex. This is a good place to start all help sessions.

• What have you been doing in class that relates to this problem? Can you explain the main ideas to me so I can think about the problem with you?

• Do you have some examples in your notes or toolkit that would help us think about this problem? Did your class do a Summarize the Mathematics recently that would be relevant?

• Explain to me what you know right now, and why that is not enough to do this problem.

• Explain these vocabulary words to me. Are there other words that you don't understand?

• What have you tried? Explain the steps to me. Can you explain this another way?

• Is there a way to organize this, with a sketch or a diagram or a graph or a table, that might help us get a handle on the problem?

• If you can't complete the problem, can you make a simpler problem that you can complete?

• Write down a question that tells your teacher where you got lost.

• Is there someone else on your team that you can call to ask if they are also having difficulty?

• Now that you have a solution, does it make sense? Can you check your solution? Have you answered clearly and completely? Convince me.