Wait for it . . . Wait for it . . .

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? 

Excerpted from the Talk Science Primer, TERC, 2012