Time in every classroom is precious. Every teacher should be thinking about how they use it. This consideration is especially important for EL students. One thing related to time that I want to talk about today is wait time. At the end of the post I will teach you the QPS strategy that you can use tomorrow in your classroom.
Stop and think
Wait time is the practice of pausing during instruction to allow students think. Sometime it may seem natural to ask a question and quickly call on an eager student willing to share. However, that isn’t best practice especially if you have EL students in your class.
This is for a couple of reasons. The first being processing time and the second being student confidence.
If a student is not a native English speaker, the student may have to process the question in another language first. This puts them at a disadvantage if they would like to answer the question, but aren’t given the opportunity to. Since the call and response is so quick an EL student is always playing catch up in the conversation.
The second reason is related to the first but slightly different. Since an EL student may take longer to gather their thoughts, they may be less likely to respond in front of peers for fear of making mistakes. So how do we more students the time they need to think?
Use QPS.
- Question
- Pause
- Scan
When using this strategy ask the question. Pause for at least 5-10 seconds and possibly longer. While waiting for volunteers scan the room inviting students to think and share.
Hopefully this strategy will help more students think and interact in tor classrooms.
dreaming big... 