Tip: Teacher Wait Time

Allowing students more reflection and processing time helps all students, and it has the potential to be even more beneficial for students who are less likely to be first to respond.

Image credit to @ValentinaESL, found at The Power of Wait Time for ELLs and ALL Students

Something that instructors can do in the classroom that is a small change with big impacts on how class interactions work is allowing for sufficient wait time - time for students to process and reflect before responding to a question. The first exploration of teacher wait time was a study of elementary school classrooms. The study showed that most instructors wait barely one second before calling on a student, restating the question, asking a follow-up, or providing the answer themselves. Extending the length of silence after a question (wait time or what Stahl calls student think time) led to a greater variety of responses, with a greater diversity of students participating and being willing to speculate or discuss even when they did not know the answer. Further, teachers who engaged in increased wait time asked a greater variety of questions, accepted a greater variety of responses, and more positively evaluated the responses of students whom they perceived as lower-achieving.

The adjustment to what you do as an instructor isn’t a big one: waiting three or more seconds showed marked improvement in all of the areas above. It’s most effective, I find, to allow a wait time of at least 3-5 seconds before hearing responses or reframing the question. It’s also important to pose a question that is clearly structured: one question, not multiple embedded questions, and one with cues for the student about the expected response.

What I hear very often when observing beginning instructors is a question formulated like this one:

So, think about what the author is trying to say here. What is the main idea? How does the evidence support what they’re saying…how do they use the evidence and what kinds of evidence do they have? And is this effective at supporting that point or not, do you think, and how do you know?

To the instructor, what they’re asking the students to think about seems fairly straightforward. They want students to identify the main idea, or the main argument, and evaluate how well the author supports that argument. But what they’re actually asking them to do is a multistage cognitive process:

• What is the main idea?

• Can you identify where the author provides evidence to support their point?

• What types of evidence are used?

• How effective is this evidence?

Students who have been asked to consider these questions individually in the past might be better prepared to consider addressing them in a stacked form like the example above. Most students, however, will hear what the teacher has said and address only one of the questions. Then you have a situation where some of the students are telling you the main idea, some are identifying supporting details (evidence), and some are trying to address the effectiveness of the evidence. With three (at least!) different things going on in the discussion, it’s almost inevitable that students will be confused, and you’ll have to start over.

What I find helpful about this small shift is that allowing students more reflection and processing time helps all students, and it has the potential to be even more beneficial for students who are less likely to be first to respond - students who are less confident speaking up in front of others, students who are English language learners, students who are struggling with their grasp of the content, or students who feel marginalized in the classroom setting. Within the remote delivery context, it’s even more important to consider that technology might be a barrier to quickly responding. It might be helpful to both ask a question orally and type it in the chat or display it via screenshare, pause to allow students to reflect, and then allow students to both chat or respond orally.

So - allow the silence to “sit” for 3-5 seconds. At first it may feel strange, and it even just 3 seconds will almost certainly feel like a long time, but try it and see how your classroom interactions shift.

Good luck!

Read more here:

• Wait-Time And Rewards As Instructional Variables, Their Influence On Language, Logic, And Fate Control (Mary Budd Rowe)

• Wait Time: Slowing Down May Be A Way of Speeding Up! (Mary Budd Rowe)

• Using "Think-Time" and "Wait-Time" Skillfully in the Classroom (Robert Stahl)

• Increase Student Learning in Only 3 Seconds (Jennifer Sullivan, Faculty Focus)

• Why Wait? The Importance of Wait Time in Developing Young Students’ Language and Vocabulary Skills (Barbara Wasik & Annemarie Hindman)

• The Role of Wait Time in Higher Cognitive Level Learning (Kenneth Tobin)