In my 3rd grade class there are a few students who are very vocal and always raise their hands to answer questions, tending to dominate classroom discussions. This is the case across all subjects. Some of these students frequently have the correct answers whenever they raise their hands, while others simply like to jump up and contribute to the discussion regardless of whether their responses are fully formed or not. There are many other students in the class who are well capable of contributing good ideas about math but they tend to hold back and not share their thoughts with the whole class. I want to use talk moves that allow as many students as possible to feel comfortable contributing ideas, especially the quieter ones. To achieve this goal, the talk move that stood out to me the most is Move 5: Wait Time.
I have heard about this method and its proven effectiveness many times, but this reading made me think very carefully about it and try to imagine using in my own class, especially in math. I especially liked the description of the teacher using wait time in her class and the way in which more and more students raised their hands to respond the longer she waited. This is a method I would definitely like to try in my student teaching class. I know that when questions are posed in math the most confident and vocal students will raise their hands immediately, but providing wait time will hopefully allow students who are quieter to collect their thoughts and be willing to share. The article states that, “[F]ew students can speedily put together a complicated answer about their own reasoning.” (page 17). Especially in a discussion where many students are sharing their ideas, wait time allows all students the opportunity to process each other’s ideas and formulate their own thoughts. Wait time is necessary to allow students to put together well thought out responses and help them to realize what they do and do not understand about different math concepts.
I also have students in my 3/4 class who raise their hands for everything rather they actually know the answer or not. My CT uses wait time very effectively. I think your students would definitely benefit from it as well. Something else my CT does, is she acknowledges the few students who do contribute their answers by saying something like "ok (name), I am so happy you are so excited to share your answers but in fairness to the rest of your classmates, lets see what they have to say now". This way, she doesn't discourage these students so they stop giving answers but lets them know that they need to let others contribute as well. Another thing she does is before asking a question, she reminds the class that they need to wait and listen to the whole question, sit and think to themselves for 30 seconds, and then they can raise their hands to share. This way, it allows everyone time to formulate their responses and eliminates students from raising their hands before hearing the entire question. Just some more examples of how you can implement wait time!
ReplyDeleteI think wait time is definitely a good strategy to get a lot of students to participate. Although thinking about it, there might be something else you could do that my CT actually does - passing out "tickets" that the students have to have in order to share their thoughts. This way, she goes around and checks out their work and will let them know, "You have something really interesting that I would like you to share with the class"; this way, the students are confident when they share that their idea is right on track and interesting at the same time. This also stops those children who jump to share all the time from doing that. They will begin to realize they need a coupon to share, therefore they will hopefully be better listeners. We all know that some students sit there and just formulate what they want to say in their head while completely missing a good point one of their classmates might be making.
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