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Session 3. Guiding Without Telling
Objective. Respond to students' difficulties with questions, a hint ladder and fading scaffolds instead of giving the answer, and decide when a short direct explanation is right.
The hardest moment in an inquiry lesson is the silence when a group is stuck. Everything in a teacher wants to explain. But if you explain at once, the group loses the very thinking the lesson was built for. At the same time, leaving students alone usually does not help. This session gives you a middle path: a hint ladder, scaffolds you can make from paper and remove in time, and clear rules for when to tell directly.
Key ideas
Guidance is not absence of teaching
- Some critics say that learning with minimal guidance works poorly. Hmelo-Silver, Duncan and Chinn answered that good inquiry is not unguided: it relies on strong scaffolding and structure.
- So your job changes: you design the path (question, materials, steps, checkpoints) and then guide on it. You do not remove yourself.
- The aim is that students do the thinking while you manage the difficulty: not so easy that nothing is learned, not so hard that they give up.
The hint ladder
- Step 1: ask what they see or have done so far. Step 2: ask what they tried and what happened. Step 3: point to the evidence in their own table or drawing.
- Step 4: give a small hint, such as 'what if you change only the width?'. Step 5 only if needed: model one step with a different example, then step back.
- Wait three seconds after each question. Silence feels long to the teacher but is short for a student who is thinking. Avoid leading questions like 'Don't you think it is the metal?'.
Scaffolds that fade, and when to tell
- Useful scaffolds are cheap: a planning sheet with 'we change / we measure / we keep the same', sentence starters, a worked example of a different problem, hint cards turned face down.
- Fade them: first lesson full planning sheet, next lesson only the three headings, later none. The Education Endowment Foundation's metacognition guidance supports modelling and then letting students take over.
- Tell directly when it is a safety rule, a convention (a unit, a symbol, a word) or a misconception that stops all progress. Keep it under two minutes, then return the problem to students.
Try it in your next lessons
- Make a set of five hint cards for one investigation (steps 3-5 of the ladder). Put them on the desk face down. Groups may take one card at a time and write what it changed.
- Evidence to bring back: ask a colleague (or note yourself after class) to tally for five minutes how many of your utterances were telling and how many asking.
- Choose one phrase to stop saying ('The answer is ...') and one to start ('What makes you think so?').
The hint ladder
Why 'minimal guidance' is the wrong goal
Critics of discovery learning, notably Kirschner, Sweller and Clark, argued that novices learn poorly when given little guidance, because their working memory is overloaded. Hmelo-Silver, Duncan and Chinn replied that well-designed inquiry is not unguided: the problem, the materials and the scaffolds carry much of the load. Both sides agree on one thing for teachers: beginners need structure.
For your classroom this means designing the path before the lesson: a clear question, a short planning sheet, a few checkpoints. Then your live guidance can be light, because the structure is already doing work.
Questions that guide, and the three-second pause
A guiding question points at the student's own evidence: 'What do you see in your table?', 'What was different in the two tries?', 'What would convince a sceptical neighbour?'. A leading question carries the answer inside it: 'Don't you think the metal conducts heat?'. Students hear the difference and stop thinking.
After asking, wait about three seconds before speaking again. Black and Wiliam argue that questions and feedback during teaching give the evidence a teacher needs to adapt, and a pause gives more students time to produce that evidence. If nobody speaks, rephrase once rather than answering.
Examples from the classroom
Warm cloth in Bukhara
Scene. Jasur's Grade 8 groups wrap three bottles of warm water in cotton, wool and plastic. One group has temperatures that hardly differ and says 'nothing works'. Jasur asks 'What were the starting temperatures?' then 'What would show a bigger difference?'. The group realises the room was warm and the time of 20 minutes was short, and decides to measure at 40 minutes.
Insight. Two questions pointed at the group's own data, and the group found the fix itself.
Hint cards in Tashkent
Scene. Aziz has 38 students in Grade 7 in Tashkent and cannot visit every group. He prepares three hint cards per investigation, turned face down: 'What are you keeping the same?', 'How will you know the time is accurate?', 'What does your table say about the biggest parachute?'. A group takes a card only after trying for two minutes and writes what the card changed.
Insight. Hint cards let one teacher give graded help to many groups.
A burner in Namangan
Scene. In Malika's Grade 8 class in Namangan a group begins to heat water in a glass jar on a small flame. Malika does not ask a question. She stops them, says plainly that glass is not used over a flame and that she holds the handle of any hot pot, then asks the group to propose a safe set-up. The whole interruption takes one minute.
Insight. Safety is a time to tell; then give the thinking back to students.
Common pitfalls
- Asking a question that is really an answer ('Isn't it because of the metal?').
- Helping the loudest group first and never reaching the quiet ones.
- Removing all scaffolds in one go, so that students feel abandoned.
- Never telling anything, even when a misconception blocks everything or safety is at stake.
Replace Telling with a Question
- Read the six classroom moments on the transcript cards in your Activity Kit. Alone (6 min): for each, write what the teacher said and mark it T (told) or Q (asked).
- In pairs (12 min): rewrite each T moment as a hint-ladder sequence of three prompts, steps 1-4 only. Keep each prompt under 12 words.
- In trios (20 min): one is Teacher, one Student, one Observer. The Student acts a group stuck on card 3 (conflicting data). The Teacher uses only the ladder. Observer ticks wait time and leading questions. Rotate roles once.
- As a group (7 min): agree on three moments when telling IS right, and on one hint card you would write for your own class.
Your facilitator will guide you through this activity in the session.
Questions to discuss
- What was the hardest moment to ask rather than tell, and why?
- How did waiting three seconds feel as the teacher and as the student?
- Which scaffold could you make tonight from paper, and when will you fade it?
Reflect
- When do you give the answer too early, and what is going on in you at that moment?
- Which students need more scaffolding and which are ready to lose it?
- What might a colleague notice if they counted your questions for five minutes?
Try it tomorrow
- Write three hint cards for your next investigation (steps 3-5 of the ladder) and put them face down on the desk.
- Ask a colleague to tally for five minutes how often you tell and how often you ask, or tally yourself right after class.
- Pick one phrase to drop ('The answer is ...') and one to use ('What makes you think so?').
Further reading and links
Design the path, ask before you tell, climb the hint ladder one step at a time, and fade your scaffolds.