Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Questioning Homework

I was discussing the challenges of getting Oldest Son to do his homework with someone yesterday.  He suggested that I try using a more Socratic approach, and ask Oldest to tell me how he's going to figure out a problem, or how he's going to get his homework done if he doesn't work on it now.

I tried it last night, and it worked pretty well.  Then I tried it again tonight, and it didn't go so well.  He was having trouble with a math problem, and he didn't like the way that I solved it.  He was absolutely convinced that I was wrong, and that he knew the correct way to do it.  So I had him try to solve it his way.  He couldn't get the right answer.  I showed him my way, and that I could get the right answer.  He still insisted that I was doing it wrong.  He got really worked up.  We locked horns for a while, then I managed to disengage.

I said that I wanted him to show me tomorrow night how his teacher told him to solve it.  By this time he was so worn out that he went to bed, around 8:30.

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