As a Xennial, I was raised to find answers to questions in books.  For those of you who are younger than me, I had to go to the library and check out a book, read it, and hope I found my answer.  The other option we had was to ask people until we found someone with the answer and hoped it was correct.  We didn’t have a computer in our pocket that could give us practically any information in the world like we do today.  We had to work for information.  The new way of getting information instantaneously in the 21st century is making it harder to develop critical thinking and long-term memory because information is given so quickly and without work on our part.

Years ago, I was taught how to use questions to help students find the answers to problems themselves.  This method is called the Socratic Teaching Method which encourages students to be assisted in finding the answer instead of giving them the answer.  In this process, questions help the student think critically about the problem and arrive at the answer on their own.  This creates a neural pathway and teaches the student how to solve similar problems on their own.  Eventually, the student will learn how to ask the necessary questions to discover answers without assistance.

Asking your student questions allows them to talk through their thought process and how they arrived at their answer.  This allows you to correct any small errors along the way, by asking questions to help them find their own mistakes. Students will learn to slow their thinking down and analyze their steps to self-correct any errors.  Learning self-correction is a valuable skill for anyone to have.  When we can articulate our thought process, it helps reinforce that way of processing information, especially if a teacher or parent encourages us when we are correct.  This process of having your student learn to answer questions as they work through problems is especially helpful to students who are verbal processors.  This means that talking through problems helps their brain process the information better.

Learning this skill is difficult at first.  Working through problems will take much longer and the student may be frustrated at first because they are used to someone giving them the right answer when they are wrong.  These new skills will help them in many areas of their lives.  Facilitating dialog while completing schoolwork also allows us to encourage what they get correct.  This helps build their self-esteem and teaches them to see specifically where they have errors and make corrections.

Below are some tips on how you can start using this method with your student.

• Explain that you want to understand how the student figures out the problem.

• We want the student to feel the questions are inquisitive and not accusatory. Your words and tone carry a lot of meaning.

• Ask open-ended questions. The goal is to encourage thought and dialog.

• Asking only questions goes against our natural way of helping, so it will be difficult at first. The more you do it, the better you will get at it.

• Be patient with your student and yourself. You are both building new skills and it will take time.

We use the Socratic Teaching Method at the Fort Wayne Center for Learning and I have used it as a parent.  The skills I taught my daughter as a young student helped her develop her inner dialog.  Now in college, she uses it when helping her classmates during study sessions.  She says it helps her change her perspective and refocus on the information.  She also says that it was really annoying growing up, but she is ultimately thankful to have that skill.