What did you mean by that?

How asking students about their thinking reveals more than whether an answer is right or wrong.

What I know 

The more time I have spent in classrooms, the more I have become aware of what I don’t know. Before I meet my students, I know the lesson's content. I know the rules of the present perfect, I know how I will explain the difference between “I’ve been” and “I went”. I know the examples to use, the activities to practice it and the questions I’ll ask for checking. 

What I don’t know 

What I don’t know is how those plans will collide with 20 different minds. What part of my explanations, examples and activities will give one student an ‘a-ha moment’ and another student an ‘I’m confused’ moment. I don't know which misconception will appear, which example a student will connect with or what prior understanding each learner is bringing to the room. I don’t know which student has developed a logical, but incomplete, understanding of present perfect.

A mistake as an opportunity to know

  

Student: “I have visited Dalat last year”  

My first reaction was: Oh no, he messed up! Should I explain the rule again?

Then I realized: Actually, this is my chance!  

Teacher: "Thanks Tuan – Can I ask what made you use the present perfect there?”

The answer told me he had made a mistake. His reasoning told me what I needed to teach. 

Learning as a black box

This is the thing I have grown to love about teaching. Learning is the one thing we are trying to influence, but it's the thing we can never actually observe directly. We only see artefacts of learning: An answer to a question, a paragraph in an essay, an awkwardly long pause in a discussion, an “I get this now” facial expression. Our job is to understand the thinking behind what we can see and hear.  The more I think about this, the more I start to imagine learning as a black box. We can't see inside it, and I think we sometimes forget that. It's easy to glance at a correct answer and assume the box did what we expected. But a right answer can hide a wrong reason, the same way a wrong answer can hide a right one. All we can do is gather clues about what's actually happening in there. Questions are how we go looking. What did you mean by that? Most of the time, that's where I can start teaching. 

What this looks like in practice  

The more I started looking for this, the more I realised it wasn't just about grammar. It appeared in almost every part of my teaching.   

Sometimes it's writing:   

A student puts the counterargument before the argument. 

Teacher: "Can you talk me through why you put this paragraph first?"  

Student:  "I wanted to show I understood the other side before I gave my opinion."  

or 

Student: "I don't really know. It just felt right."   

Two very different starting points for teaching.  

Sometimes it's reading:  

A student identifies the writer’s opinion.  

Teacher:  "What in the text made you think that?"

Student: "This sentence."  

or 

Student: "I guessed."

Both answers were correct. Only one told me how the student got there.  

Sometimes it's speaking:  

A student makes an interesting point. 

Teacher: "What did you mean by that?"

Student: "I don't know."

or

Student: "I meant that..."

The value of the question isn't the answer—it is that it opens the black box of learning. Whether the student discovers they aren't sure yet or finds the words to explain their reasoning, thinking becomes visible, giving the teacher something meaningful to respond to.

Sometimes that's all it takes. The context changes. The questions sound different. But the purpose stays the same.

The questions I value most 

I realised that maybe being a better explainer isn’t enough to be the teacher I want to be.  I still walk into my classrooms knowing the grammar, examples and the activities I have planned. But what I look forward to most are the things I can't plan—what those twenty different minds are going to do with them. I still ask plenty of questions where I already know the answer. They help me check understanding, clarify misconceptions and keep lessons moving. Those questions matter.

 I realised the questions I value most are the ones where I genuinely don't know what my students are going to say.

But somewhere along my journey as a teacher, I realised the questions I value most are the ones where I genuinely don't know what my students are going to say. They don't just tell me what my students know. They tell me what I need to teach next.

The more time I spend in classrooms, the more aware I become of what I don't know and that's become my favourite part.