Pose Purposeful Questions

Room to Grow - a Math Podcast

In this episode of Room to Grow, Joanie and Curtis continue the season 5 series on the Mathematics Teaching Practices from NCTM’s Principles to Actions, celebrating it’s 10th anniversary. This month’s practice is “Pose Purposeful Questions.” This is defined as follows:

Effective teaching of mathematics uses purposeful questions to assess and advance students’ reasoning and sense making about important mathematical ideas and relationships.

In unpacking this definition, our hosts key in on the importance of planning for questions during instruction to ensure that they are purposeful. They discuss how purposeful questions can assess student thinking by giving teacher insight to how students are reasoning about the mathematics. This might include asking a follow-up question even when a student provides a correct answer! They also consider advancing questions, that take students’ current thinking and move it beyond where they are to deeper understanding of important mathematics. With intentional and careful planning of questions, teachers can provide insight to students about what aspects of the math are most important, and encourage them to use and value their own thinking on the journey of learning math.

Additional referenced content includes:

· NCTM’s Principles to Actions

· NCTM’s Taking Action series for grades K-5, grades 6-8, and grades 9-12

· MTLT article Planning and Implementing Effective Questioning (membership required)

· (additional articles from CCTM book study Chapter 5)

Did you enjoy this episode of Room to Grow? Please leave a review and share the episode with others. Share your feedback, comments, and suggestions for future episode topics by emailing [email protected] . Be sure to connect with your hosts on X and Instagram: @JoanieFun and @cbmathguy.