Waiting Out the Silence

"I'll ask the questions, or I'll answer them, but I won't do both."  

I say this a lot in my classroom.  It is usually 30 seconds or so after I've asked a question, and a room full of physics students stare at me, hoping someone else will answer so they don't have to.

There was a time when this wouldn't have happened.  In fact, one of the first pieces of feedback I ever got after a classroom observation was that I didn't give kids enough wait time after asking a question.  Like most Americans, I was uncomfortable with silence; so I filled the time with hints and guidance (in a way I now know was interfering with their thinking).  This isn't unusual.  I observed this morning in church.  Between the first and second songs, there is a time in which we are meant to spend time in silent reflection and repentance.  The music leader spent the entire time talking about what this time should and should not be and then went right into the next song.  Even in what was supposed to be a time of silence, he was so uncomfortable with silence that he filled it with words.  

Silence is uncomfortable, but I now know that it is the most important part of the time I spend in retrieval practice with my students.  If they answer too quickly, it likely means that I have asked them to retrieve information too soon after their exposure to the material for it to be effective.  The best time to ask a student to retrieve information is just before they have forgotten it (knowns as the spacing effect).  The time it takes to search for the answer is important to the myelination of the neuron.  If I interrupt that process by filling the time with words, I am wasting my time and theirs because they won't have time to engage in the act of retrieval.

The advice I was given after that observation 23 years ago was to count to three after I asked a question.  That was good for young me.  I had no intuitive feel for how long was long enough, so counting to three was helpful.  Now, I have a different method.  I look at the kids.  I can tell when they are thinking, and I can tell when they have given up on thinking.  There is a moment in between those two times, the moment of awkward silence.  What I have found is that is the time when I should reword the question or give a guiding thought.  It's just before they have stopped thinking about the question.  I don't know how to explain what that moment looks like to younger teachers, but if you do it right, you might not need to use it much.  if you are willing to wait longer than the students' comfort level, you will usually get an answer before that point.   They will fill the silence for you, and they might do it by giving the correct answer.  If not, they might at least give an answer you can help them build upon.  

Learn to wait out the silence, and there will be more thinking in your classroom than all of the words could ever produce.