What is it?

What's Best and Why? is a way for teachers practice becoming more selective about what particular strategy they should use for different questions.

When and Why is it used?

You may want to have a What's Best and Why? discussion:

• when many students are on the verge of transitioning from one strategy to another

• when you would like students to think about when a particular strategy is useful

• you notice students are getting lost trying to keep track of something and need to organize information in order to tackle a problem

Examples: Planning a What's Best and Why? Discussion

Use the  What's Best and Why?  template to think through the plan:

• Understand the goal you are working towards or the strategy you are trying to highlight

• Choose a task or problem that will pull the strategy or goal out 

• Be aware of what you want your students to be able to explain in order to lead the conversation in that direction

Key Components of What's Best and Why? Discussion

We want students to have a variety of ways to solve a problem, but we also want them to be able to select from their repertoire of strategies in order to make wise choices about which strategy to use for a particular problem.  Having a What's Best and Why? discussion allows us to target particular strategies. 

Using What's Best and Why? is a way to structure the discussion to:

1. Show a particular strategy and ask students to generate an effective use of the strategy

2. Show a few different ways to solve a problem and ask students to figure out which is the most efficient strategy for that problem

This strategy comes from chapter 5 of the book Intentional Talk: How to Structure and Lead Productive Mathematical Discussions by Elham Kazemi & Allison Hintz