Hypothesizing...

I must admit I love this concept and it makes a great tool in presenting new material to the students. Most students are not allowed the freedom to critical think about a new subject when it is introduced. I like to start a new unit with a moment of critical thinking and allowing the student to present these thoughts so that together we can come to a correct solution. In math most students are told to follow the steps to solve an equation but what we fail to do is to teach them why we are following these steps and where they are derived from. However, in hypothesizing the students and I are able to build these steps by testing the guesses against the problems and in turn they develop a theory of why we solve equations the way we do. I absolutely love this tool and I hope most teachers will adapt this technique into their own lesson plans.