4S Conversations

Description
One-on-One Activity, Group Activity | 15 minutes

4S Conversations provide a structure to get to know more about students’ math learning journey and the type of support they not only prefer, but find most helpful. Learning first about a student’s sparks (interests and passions) and strengths can lay the foundation for then learning about a student’s struggles and preferred forms of support. Click here to download this page as a PDF. This activity can:

Empower students to be a part of their own learning process.
Help educators understand how to help their students navigate through challenges by leaning into students’ interests, strengths, and preferred forms of support.

A diagram of the 4S Conversations: spark questions, strength questions, struggle questions, and support questions

Instructions

1. Ask Spark Questions

These questions invite students to share positive moments in their math learning journey or link to current interests in math. Focusing on sparks can set a positive tone to the conversation.

Example questions: Can you tell me a time when you really enjoyed doing math? What kind of math are you most interested in learning more about?

2. Ask Strength Questions

Strength questions are a positive way to help students focus their attention on what they're good at and build confidence.

Example questions: How would you describe yourself as a student? What are some things that you are good at doing? They could be school-related or outside of school.

3. Ask Struggle Questions

Struggle questions provide the opportunity for students to share challenges and barriers they face to learning.

Example questions: Can you tell me about a time when you felt like you didn’t enjoy math? If you could change something about this tutoring program or your math class, what would it be?

4. Ask Support Questions

The last step is to ask questions about how you and the learning context can best support your students as they navigate challenges. These questions not only reinforce to your students that they have been heard, but also empower them to be a part of the learning process by indicating what supports work best for them.

Example questions: What has been helpful when you have a problem about math? For example, who do you talk to when you need help? When you feel really stressed out or overwhelmed about math, what helps calm you down?

Tips and Tricks

Online Adaptation. 4S Conversations translate easily to video conferencing. If eye contact is important and comfortable for your student, remember to look directly at your computer's camera and not the live video of the student so that they can sense your presence more directly. You can also demonstrate presence by removing environmental distractions and asking follow-up questions (explore the Authentic Listening activity for more suggestions). Finally, you can also invite students to respond to text-based prompts if they feel more comfortable sharing in writing than verbally.

A note about the implicit structure. Consider 4S Conversations as a structure that you use to keep track as the conversation develops. You don't have to explicitly tell students “now I'm going to ask you a struggle question.”

Reinforcing safe conversations. An important way to reinforce your support of your child is to offer your own responses to the questions you ask in order to demonstrate what type of response you're looking for. This also reminds students that you have your own strengths/weaknesses as well.

Engaging Families. You can invite families to try this activity at home by providing this activity as a handout or sent electronically.

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