A 10-week at-home track that runs alongside your sessions. Your sessions follow what she is doing in class. This builds the thing class rarely teaches directly: how to think your way into an unfamiliar problem and not freeze.
One problem a week, done at home, where Kelcy records herself thinking out loud while she works. The goal is not a tidy correct answer. The goal is to make her thinking visible, so she can hear her own detective at work and you can see exactly where she gets stuck.
It runs in parallel with your live sessions, which stay reactive to class. This track is deliberate and slow-burning: the same Detective ritual every week, on complex unfamiliar problems, with your help fading out over the ten weeks until she runs the whole thing herself.
Four pieces of research shape the whole program. You do not need to teach any of this to Kelcy, it just explains the choices.
Students who are taught to ask themselves four kinds of question (do I understand it? have I seen one like it? what strategy fits? does my answer make sense?) outperform those who just practise. Those four are exactly Open the Case, Check the Case Files, Pick Your Gadget, and the Sniff Test.
Novices pick one approach and ride it off a cliff. Experts constantly stop and ask "what am I doing and is it working?" Teaching that one mid-problem check is the highest-leverage move, so it gets its own ritual.
Metacognition has to be taught inside the maths, not as generic "thinking tips", the teacher has to model it out loud, and prompts must be faded or the child becomes prompt-dependent. That is the spine of the ten weeks.
What makes a question "complex unfamiliar": a real-world story, no clear path, needing you to combine topics, often work backwards, multi-step, and justify that the answer is reasonable. That is the recipe for the harder weeks.
Anchored in IMPROVE (Mevarech & Kramarski), Schoenfeld's monitoring work, the EEF metacognition and self-regulated learning guidance, and Chinofunga & Chigeza (2024, JCU / MERGA) on complex unfamiliar problem design. QCAA chilli bands: 1 simple familiar, 2 complex familiar, 3 complex unfamiliar.
If you keep only these, the program still works. Drop these and it quietly stops working.
About 20 to 30 minutes at home. Same shape every week so it becomes automatic.
Three checkpoints (red, orange, green) bracket the program so you can measure movement, not just feel it.
| Week | Focus | Case types | Chilli | Your prompting |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 ● Diagnostic | The Cold Case: see where she breaks down | Mixed (one per blocker) | 1 to 3 | None. No help, just record. |
| 2 | You model the full ritual out loud | Tank | 2 | You think aloud; she echoes |
| 3 | Decode drill, name the case type | Tank + Backwards | 2 | Full scaffold, all 6 skills visible |
| 4 | Build the toolkit | Container + Crossover | 2 to 3 | Full scaffold, she leads |
| 5 ● Check-in | The Case Review: measure movement, retune | Mixed (parallel set) | 1 to 3 | None. No help, just record. |
| 6 | Step into the unfamiliar | Mixed | 3 | Prompts fade: she self-asks first |
| 7 | Complex unfamiliar | Mixed | 3 | Minimal: only "Three Knocks?" |
| 8 | Complex unfamiliar | Mixed | 3 | Minimal |
| 9 | Near-solo | Mixed | 3 | You observe only |
| 10 ● Final | Case Closed: same problems as Week 1 | Mixed (Week 1 set) | 1 to 3 | Solo, then compare to Week 1 |
This is the whole game. Your prompting starts high and is gone by the end. Picture it as a slope, not a switch.
* Weeks 1, 5 and 10 are the checkpoints. No prompting there on purpose, because you are measuring what she can do unaided. The fade happens across the teaching weeks in between.
Same shape, spread across the program, so you have three honest snapshots instead of a vibe.
Five carefully chosen problems, no help, recorded. Each one probes a different blocker. Gives you her starting profile: is it decoding, connecting, strategy, monitoring, fundamentals, or checking?
Open the diagnostic →Five fresh problems that probe the same six blockers as Week 1. Re-record, compare profiles, and retune which blocker the back half leans into.
Open the check-in →Re-run the exact Week 1 problems. Nine weeks on, she meets the same cases that beat her and cracks them solo. Powerful evidence, and a real confidence moment.
Uses the Week 1 set →You are not grading. You are locating the stall. As you listen, you are sorting what you hear into six layers (the diagnostic page has the full map and a sheet to fill in):
Whichever layer shows up most is where the teaching weeks should lean. A right answer with no checking is a finding. A wrong answer with great process is a win. Listen for the thinking, not the result.
The first move is never to fix it. It is to find where it broke. "Talk me through it, where do you reckon it went sideways?" Getting her to locate her own slip is self-explanation, the highest-value thing you can do, and it is "Dead Ends Are Clues" in action. Only once you know why it is wrong do you pick the response, and the response depends on the blocker:
| If it broke at... | Your move (don't just re-explain) |
|---|---|
| 🔍 Decode | Re-read together, hunt the question, strip the distractor. "What is it actually asking?" |
| 🗂️ Connect | "Cracked one shaped like this before? Flip your journal." Show a solved parallel case. |
| 🧰 Strategy | Give a worked example to study, or a half-done one to finish. Then "pick your gadget, and say why." |
| 🚪 Monitor | Replay with a knock at each step. "Did you answer the whole question, or stop early?" |
| 🧮 Fundamentals | Step out of the word problem, drill just that skill, then come back. Drop the chilli until it is solid. |
| 👃 Evaluate | Only the sniff test, nothing else. "Is that reasonable? Right size, right units?" |
The cousin question (enabling prompt). Hand her the same kind of case with friendlier numbers, never the method. She cracks the cousin, then the original looks easy. This is your go-to "another practice question", done so it builds the pattern instead of just repeating the wall.
The funny worked example (find-the-mistake). Show the goblin solving it and making the common slip, and have her catch it. Studying a wrong example builds the same radar that prevents it, and the humour takes the sting out of being wrong (which matters most for the anxious moments).
Your running notes, the blocker map, the observation sheet, and the verified answer key.
Open →The clean question sheet to print or send to GoodNotes. No hints, lots of space.
Open →Parallel problems and a compare-to-Week-1 panel, ready for when you get there.
Open →The write-on GoodNotes page she uses for every case in between checkpoints.
Open →