The REAL Reset: Math Moves That Matter – Tuesday Edition
Questions That Build Thinking Series
Part 2: Stop Asking Questions That Only Have One Level
The REAL Story
In my first three years of teaching, I used to get genuinely frustrated during Questioning has been a focus for almost seven years. Once I realized the power of questioning I really started to hone in on best practices on questioning, how to differentiate questioning and how to construct the best questions to elicit the information I wanted from students.
I told you last issue, I realized early in my career have one of the most powerful PD’s was delivered to me. As I stated, they asked me for my weak areas in teaching, I said my questions don’t elicit the information I am looking for from my students. On a scheduled day, the facilitator sat in my room all day and wrote down the questions I asked my students.
At the end of the day, she gave no feedback except for the list of questions she scribed all day in my room. And no feedback was needed because the questions I asked spoke volumes.
My first realization from this day was that questioning had to be a part of my lesson planning if I wanted to improve the quality.
The second realization was I needed to be able to meet my students where they were and bring them up to where I wanted them to be, which was to enter the math problem or have access to the task.
For example I needed to use my questioning as a ladder to bring them from recall to being able to justify their reasoning.
For example, I would ask:
“What is the slope and what does it mean?”
A student would say, “The slope is 4 and it means it’s positive.”
And early in my career, I would accept that.
Technically, the student was not wrong. The slope was 4. It was positive. But that response was still living at the surface.
What I really wanted was something like:
“The slope is 4, which means the speed is increasing by 4 miles per hour.”
That answer shows interpretation. It connects the number to the context. It translates math into meaning.
But here was the problem. I was asking one question and expecting a layered response. I had not built the progression.
Therefore, I needed to structure it like this:
Layer 1:
What is the slope of the line?
Layer 2:
What does a positive slope tell us about the direction of the relationship?
Layer 3:
What does a slope of 4 represent in this specific context or in the real life scenario?
Now students move from identifying the number, to interpreting direction, to explaining meaning in context.
What I realized was I needed to build progression. And the only way to do this was sequencing or layering.
You cannot jump from “What is it?” to “Why does it work?” and expect students to make that leap without support. What I learned was that depth is not a jump, but is a build.
Once I understood that, my questioning stopped being reactive and started being layered.
💕 3 Questioning Moves That Build Thinking in Layers
1️⃣ Separate the work instead of stacking it.
When you ask students to solve, explain, and justify in one breath, most of them will only do the first part. I had to learn to break the thinking apart. First identify the answer. Then explain the process. Then justify why that process works. When those layers are separated, students are far more likely to climb them because the path is visible.
2️⃣ Build the next layer off what they actually say.
Layering is not just about the questions you plan; it’s about how you respond in the moment. If a student gives you the answer, that becomes the base. From there, you ask what led them to it. If they describe the steps, you push into why those steps make sense. Each response becomes the foundation for the next layer. Instead of jumping ahead to the deepest question, you build upward from where they are. That is how thinking develops instead of collapsing.
3️⃣ Make the reasoning the expectation, not the bonus.
If explanation only happens when you have extra time, students will treat it like optional work. Layered questioning means reasoning is built into the structure of the lesson. An answer is never the finish line. It is the starting point for explanation. Over time, students stop giving one-word responses because they know the thinking does not stop there. The culture shifts from answer-getting to meaning-making.
The Close
For a long time, I thought deeper thinking would happen if I simply asked better questions.
And the truth is, it did.
But there was another piece to it. I had to stop expecting one question to produce three different levels of thinking. I could not ask students to identify, explain, and justify in the same breath and then be disappointed when they only completed the first task.
Things changed when I stopped stacking everything into one prompt and started building layer by layer. When I refused to let answers sit without explanation, the level of thinking in my room rose. Not because my students suddenly became stronger learners, but because I became more deliberate about how I structured the path to get them there.
Layered questioning is not something you try when there is extra time. It is how you design instruction so reasoning is required, not optional.
If the thinking from your students feels flat, start with the questions.
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Tiffany Smith, Ed. D., Your Culturally Responsive Math Specialist
Founder, Education Evolution, LLC | Creator, The REAL Framework™ | Creator of Mind the Gap Curriculum™
"Here’s to classrooms filled with real growth, real talk, and REAL results."
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