This Japanese teacher begins his lesson with a demanding and challenging problem for students. He poses an open-ended, abstract problem for students to think about, before conducting a class vote on the question where students close their eyes and vote anonymously. The teacher captures the thought in the room by writing down the results of the vote, and from here the students begin to explore this challenging problem to solve it. The first thing the class do are form into small groups to speak out the method they had previously learned.

This is an urban, public school. Watch out for how the teacher:
- Asks students to reflect on a demanding evaluative question

- Conducts a class vote on their initial thoughts

- Organises students into groups to recall previous learning

How do you use cognitively engage students in your own classroom?