Technique 16: Break It Down

(Part of Chapter 3: Structuring and Delivering Your Lessons)

"Break It Down" is a strategy you use in response to an incorrect answer to a question.  The idea is to quickly analyze where you think the student went wrong in formulating her/his answer, and then ask questions or give information that fix that error, and then ask subsequent questions (or repeat the original question) to get back to the correct complete answer.

Lemov says,

You never know exactly how big the gap is between the student's level of knowledge and the knowledge necessary for mastery, but in most cases, you want to provide the smallest hint possible and still enable your student to get to the correct answer successfully. (p 89)

One difficulty is taking the time to break down the problem sufficiently, but not taking too much time so that the entire flow of the lesson is broken.

Some examples of "Break It Down" techniques follow.

• Provide examples: provide an example of an answer to the question.  E.g., if the question is "what is a prime number?", say, "7 is one, so is 11, and 13".
• Provide context: e.g., use an unknown word in a few sentences to see if a student can derive the meaning.
• Provide a rule: if you've set up rules for determining the answer to the question, remind the student of the rule.
• Provide the missing step.
• Eliminate false choices.

My response:

This is a useful technique, even in the college classroom.  In FIT, I show students an Excel formula and ask them if it correct or not.  If they say it is correct, then I break it down by asking if it obeys some of the rules we have established ("never" use constants in formulas, will the formula still work if copied/moved, etc.)

It is useful in teaching intro programming, too, I think.  We go through many examples where my students have to write short code snippets.  When they are wrong, I try to break it down.

The real challenge is, I think, to break down problems quickly, but get back on track quickly, too.