An easy, effective strategy
One simple change to your instruction you can make right now is to improve the way you use Wait Time. Wait time is simply defined as the amount of time you as a teacher allow between the asking and answering of a question.
Very often, after the teacher asks a question, one of two things happens. A student raises their hand and is immediately called on, or the teacher rephrases or answers their own question before students have a chance to respond. The “wait time” here is the very limited space between the teacher asking a question and the next thing that gets said.
The downside of short wait times is that students do not have a chance to fully process the question or information before a response is expected. When the teacher cuts off any opportunity for thinking by following up their own statement or calling on the student who can happen to process information that quickly, the rest of the students are left out of engaging with the inquiry. Over time, students may “learn” they don’t need to respond to the teacher’s questions because they anticipate the teacher calling on the first student or answering their own question anyhow. Unfortunately, wait times of under 1 second are highly common.
Educator and researcher Mary Budd Rowe has strongly advocated for the concept of Wait Time over her decades of pioneering research and practice.
“To put it briefly, when teachers ask questions of students, they typically wait 1 second or less for the students to start a reply; after the student stops speaking they begin their reaction or proffer the next question in less than 1 second. If teachers can increase the average length of the pauses at both points, namely, after a question and, even more important, after a student response, to 3 seconds or more, there are pronounced changes (usually regarded as improvements) in student use of language and logic as well as in student and teacher attitudes and expectations.”
“Wait Time: Slowing Down May Be A Way of Speeding Up!” Rowe, 1983
What You Lose with Poor Wait Time
One thing I’ve told students many times is that “silence is the sound of thinking.” Wait time is like a short pause button, a few moments of facilitated silence during which information can be processed by everyone involved. Unfortunately, student information processing and opportunity to respond diminishes significantly when teachers fail to provide enough silence for them to think.
One of the biggest detriments to too-short wait time is the lost opportunity for student involvement. The students who grasp the question and process an answer the quickest will be the only ones who respond.
If we reflect on it, we might acknowledge it is a rather common phenomena to direct a question to the entire class, then call immediately on the first hand that is raised. The exchange might take only a moment, and while the individual student who engaged with the teacher may benefit, the rest of the students are left in the dust. The ultimate impact may be that after experiencing this class after class each day for years of schooling, many students fail to even attempt to process or engage with a question. Why? Because they’ve learned that doing so is pointless – they just don’t process fast enough to make it worth the effort.
Another detriment is that student responses tend to be shorter and less thoughtful when wait time is diminished. When wait time increases, the opposite becomes evident: the quality of student responses increases as well! The University Center for the Advancement of Teaching at Ohio State University summarizes that “Rowe, as well as subsequent researchers, found that the length of student responses tends to increase at least threefold. Student responses tended to be more substantive, including more thorough argumentation and less mimicry of what the instructor had already stated.”
So when our wait time is short – meaning that we allow less than 3 seconds of silence after asking a question – both the number and quality of student responses decreases. If we’re looking to improve how many students engage with our prompts and how well they do it, then adjusting our wait time is an easy step in that direction!
What Good Wait Time Looks Like
At it’s core, good wait time looks like this: the teacher asks a question and waits at least 3 seconds prior to making another sound.
To get the most out of your wait time, consider waiting up to 10 seconds prior to making another sound. And don’t just do this after you ask a question; do this after students respond to you or after students ask questions of their own.
Rowe reminds us that wait time is a rather intuitive process. “It makes sense to slow down a little and give students a chance to think.” Other researchers, like Robert Stahl, have built off of Rowe’s pioneering work with wait time. Stahl recognized that “wait time” is named for what is happening externally — we’re waiting for a response — but internally we are really allowing room for thinking. He focuses on forms of what he calls “think time” and recognizes the value of pauses and silences within the course of any lesson. Thinking, in short, is an internal process, and the fewer external variables that interrupt that thinking process the better the outcomes.
So where can wait time be applied? There are several places where teachers should mindfully include appropriate wait time. Here are the top four:
- After the teacher asks a question (and before calling on anyone). Just let the question breath. Let students know it’s okay to think about it before rocketing their hand in the air.
- After a student responds to the question. It takes processing time for others to grasp a response, just as it does a question. Give them room to think about the student’s answer prior to responding or moving on.
- After a student asks a question of their own. You don’t have to respond right away; allow everyone in the room a chance to think about and respond to what’s been asked.
- As students interact with one another. This is just about teachers and students talking; this is about how students begin to learn to interact with one another.
And what are the impacts of improved wait time practices? What impresses me is that this relatively minor adjustment can dramatically improve a number of important aspects of your classroom. It helps increase the number of students who end up responding. It helps improve the quality of those student responses. It can particularly empower introverted students who benefit from taking extra time to forge their response prior to speaking out. It enhances student listening skills by encouraging all students to engage in wait time. And it makes for a more inclusive learning environment by showing it’s not just the few or the fastest, but everyone’s thinking the teacher is interested in facilitating.
Practical Ways to Improve Your Wait Time
So it’s important to remember a couple of things when it comes to wait time. Improving your wait time impacts 1) how many students engage with the prompt, and 2) the quality of responses from students. Changing your wait time is a simple and effective strategy to ensuring a better student experience for everyone in your classroom.
Here are a few practical tips for making sure you’re taking steps to make the most out of the valuable, awkward silence of wait time.
- My first and favorite method is simply to be transparent. Tell students explicitly that you are expanding wait time and going to mentally count to at least three before expecting responses.
- Resist the urge to call on the first hand you see. Resist the urge to call on the first 3 hands you see. Why? It shows that you are not interested in hearing just from the fastest. You’re going to intentionally delay calling on someone for the purpose of giving others time to think.
- Say less. Resist the urge to fill dead space with the sound of your own voice.
- Ask effective questions. If you phrase your question well, you won’t need to rephrase it or explain it. Just ask and wait.
- Ask open-ended questions requiring more than a one-word response. Such questions benefit from more thinking and naturally require the time to do it.
- Model wait time. You’re going to wait after you ask a question, but do it after students speak to you, too. Show them that you’re thinking, processing, weighing a response before immediately spewing the first things that come to mind.
- Adjust your wait time for your audience. Preschoolers may benefit from 3-second waits to age-appropriate questions; high schools may benefit more from 10-second waits for more sophisticated topics.
Remember, as Harvard Professor Bob Kegan acknowledges, “The amount of time you wait is always going to feel longer than it actually is.” Our natural temptation is to immediately fill int he dead space with the sound of our voice. It gives us comfort, a sense of control, and a feeling that things are happening. Ultimately, it will take practice to feel comfortable counting silently in your head before moving on, but it is worth it to reap the benefits of wait time!
- Rowe, Mary Budd. “Wait Time: Slowing Down May Be A Way of Speeding Up! – Mary Budd Rowe, 1986.” SAGE Journals, 1 Jan. 1983, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/002248718603700110.
- “The Value of Awkward Silence: Increasing Wait Time in the Classroom.” UCAT, 11 Oct. 2011, https://ucat.osu.edu/blog/value-awkward-silence-increasing-wait-time-classroom/.
- Stahl, Robert J. “Using ‘Think Time’ and ‘Wait Time’ Skillfully in the Classroom.” Educational Resources Information Center, Clearinghouse for Social Studies/Social Science Education Bloomington Indiana, 1994, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED370885.pdf.