Using ‘Tell Me More’ Prompts to Make Learning Stick

At Sugarloaf Elementary School in Frederick, Maryland, kindergarten teacher Heather Van Eck does something intentional with her students to help make learning stick better during their math lesson on groups of 10—as she roams the room, instead of showing them what they did wrong or providing them the correct answer, she approaches their work with curiosity, prompting them with simple questions tailored to get them to explain their thinking—and often, arrive at a new understanding on their own.

It’s one of the ways Van Eck injects more research-backed learning science into her daily classroom practice. By asking students to walk her through their thinking by saying, “Tell me more about how you did this,” she’s helping them cement the concepts she’s trying to teach.

As Jim Heal from Learning Science Partners explains, “Inviting students to rationalize why they arrived at an idea is a really powerful way to make that idea more memorable.” He emphasizes the importance of asking the right questions that push for deeper thinking, instead of those that can be answered yes or no. For teachers trying it out, Deans for Impact has published a resource called “Prompting for Effortful Thinking” that describes how to do this more effectively, shares why it works, and lists common pitfalls to avoid.

“When I ask the right question,” says Van Eck, “I can really see the light bulb come on.” In this class, she noticed a student’s mistake and, instead of pointing it out, asked her to rationalize her thinking, which led to an aha moment for the kindergartner. “I was like, ‘Tell me a little bit about this.’ And I could just see that she was able to then look at her own work without me correcting her right away.”

Another way that questioning can be enormously helpful is to keep students at the site of thinking for longer, which in turn makes the learning stick. As Heal explains, “It’s overlooked as a very effective strategy simply to say, ‘Tell me more about that.’ Keeping students at the face of a concept longer—we know that’s likely to make that idea more reliably remembered for the future.”

This video is part of our How Learning Happens series, which explores teaching practices grounded in the science of learning and human development.