You’re
the teacher. You have just given students opportunities to dig deep into
thinking. You have set the classroom environment; you have scaffolded;
you have had students sharing thinking; now you want an all class
discussion. What is the most important “talk move” you can do at this
point: Wait
Time.
Wait
Time might seem like an unusual “talk move” because it is a pause in the talking.
But it is the most researched of all the talk moves and has been shown to
remarkably impact the quality of both students’ and teachers’ thinking.
Wait Time, as described in the work of Mary Budd Rowe (1986), involves waiting
at least 3 to 5 seconds after you ask a question, and then waiting again for
the same interval after a student responds to the question.
The
research on Wait Time is extensive. The research literature talks about
two different kinds of wait time, both important, and powerful. The first
is after you ask a question but before you call on a particular student or
before a student begins to speak.
The
second kind of Wait Time is pausing before you respond to what a student has
just said. And, of course, sometimes in the middle of a turn, a student
pauses and this second kind of wait time is important as well, waiting after a
student pauses or stops talking.
The
research – at all grade levels and across all subject domains – shows that if
you increase your wait time – to 3 seconds or even more – dramatic changes take
place.
1.
Students
say more. The length of student responses increases between 300% and
700%.
2.
They
expand and clarify and explain their thinking with evidence.
3.
The
number of questions asked by other students increases dramatically.
4.
Student-to-student
talk increases.
Increasing
Wait Time AFTER a student has talked is particularly powerful for expanding the
complexity of student explanations, the depth of reasoning and in growing the
amount of student-to-student talk where students spontaneously address or ask
questions of peers.
How
long are you waiting?
