# What is the name of this teaching style?

I'm planning to teach a series of lessons on expanding and factoring binomials using a certain visual method for my edTPA assessment. Each lesson is pretty much going to be structured the same way in that the focus will be on providing as many practice problems as time allows (with some intermittent breaks to reduce cognitive demand and students can ask questions if they need clarification on something).

Rather than directly stating the concepts and procedures, I will reveal these by providing examples for the students to work on during the lesson. I envision giving the students $$1$$-$$2$$ problems at a time and then we will discuss the solutions as a class, pointing out key concepts that relate to the lesson goals (i.e. multiplying two binomials is like multiplying the length and width of a rectangle to get the area). The exercises will get slightly more advanced as the lesson progresses (going from working with whole numbers, such as $$2(3+4)$$, to polynomials like $$2x(3x+4)$$. Students have already learned how to do simplify this expression using the Distributive Property. In this lesson they will use the Box Method instead.

This approach embraces my philosophy that students learn math by doing math, but what is the exact name of this teaching style? Has there been any research on its advantages/disadvantages?

• I don't see enough detail here to identify a particular teaching method. – Daniel R. Collins Feb 10 at 20:54
• @DanielR.Collins I added some more details in the second paragraph. Let me know if I should add anything else. – FoiledIt24 Feb 10 at 22:31
• It reminds me of Socratic Dialogue. I hadn't ever worried about naming it, but this is somewhat similar to the way I teach. – Sue VanHattum Feb 11 at 17:50
• Sounds like Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquiry-based_learning – mweiss Feb 12 at 17:43