Article
A child stuck on a problem used to flip through the textbook, try something wrong, or ask the person at the next desk. Those detours look inefficient, but they are where understanding forms. Now a neatly written solution is one prompt away, ready to be copied — and the stuck part gets skipped entirely.
Guided questioning — what is usually called the Socratic method — works on exactly that stretch. Instead of leading with the conclusion, it asks how far your thinking has gone, then decides whether the next move is a hint, a counter-question, or a smaller version of the problem.
That is the default behaviour we set for Dr. Siwei: when a student asks, it reads their reasoning before offering a hint, and keeps the answer for last. Not to be difficult — answers are everywhere anyway. What is worth keeping is the working-out.
Something else gets solved along the way: the sticking point is recorded. Where a student stalled, which detour they took, which hint finally landed — ten minutes that used to exist only at the desk become learning evidence someone can look back at.