Five moves, each matched to a specific sign. Recognize the sign, hand the kid the matching prompt out loud, they do the work of getting unstuck themselves.
1
Find the right question
Sign: Going in circles, attacking the wrong angle repeatedly, or answering something adjacent to what was actually asked.
“What are you actually trying to figure out right now?”
2
Always go back to the data
Sign: Guessing, or working off a hazy memory instead of what's actually in front of them.
“What do we actually have here? Look at it again.”
3
Step back and look from a higher level
Sign: Stuck deep in one detail, tunnel-visioned, can't connect it to the rest of the problem.
“Pull back for a second, look at the whole thing.”
4
Break a big problem into small pieces
Sign: Frozen, overwhelmed by the scale of the question.
“What's a smaller piece of this you could actually answer?”
5
Always draw a diagram
Sign: Trying to hold everything in their head, talking in circles, nothing externalized.
“Get it down on paper, don't just talk it through.”