The short answer on Socratic Method
Ask five people what Socratic Method means and you will get five answers that overlap without agreeing. The disagreement is not pedantry: it changes what you actually do next.
Two words, two jobs: Socratic names the approach and Method names who or what it is for. Most confusion comes from treating them as one idea.
Where this usually goes wrong is that a finished worksheet means the work was understood — a mistake that is invisible until something unfamiliar turns up.
Why method is the part that matters
The reason students and the families supporting them end up here is rarely academic curiosity. It is usually a specific stuck point, and Socratic Method turns out to be the name for it.
Once you separate the socratic framing from the method practice, the idea gets considerably more useful and considerably less quotable.
Two questions to work with
Open with What part of this already makes sense to you? — a diagnostic, not a test.
Follow with What would have to be true for your answer to be wrong?, which is where the actual thinking happens.
Making it routine
In practice this means working a problem aloud, then explaining the reasoning to someone else without notes.
The signal to watch for is the student starts asking their own next question before being prompted.
Next steps
The natural continuation from here is the beginner guide, then a first guided session on a topic that is currently frustrating.