Welcome to Behaviour Bites . One quick tip per week that you can put into action immediately to help you crush your classroom management . This is your host , Claire English , and this is your Bite of the Week . Hello , hello . Today's Behaviour Bites is ask and pause .
For way longer than you probably already do , I spent many , many , many , many years going through instructions and then going any questions ? Nope . Okay , great , let's get started . Not only was the pause minuscule , but the way that I was asking wasn't exactly inviting a bunch of questions , if there were any , and I know that I'm not alone .
I've done many observations across all different classes , across countries , and I know that the pause is teeny tiny . And that aligns with the research , because the research shows that the average teacher pause is just 0.9 seconds , when most of us need far longer to get those thoughts brewing . So let's just quickly talk about the way students do process information .
This is taken from a wonderful Edutopia article called Extending Silence and I will pop the link in the show notes if you're interested in reading more about that . But it basically explains that some students prefer to silently process the content . They keep it in their own heads , and these students are the internal thinkers .
Then there are the external thinkers , and these thinkers are the ones who prefer to talk or express their thinking out loud , with those around them as a sounding board . We rely on these external thinkers . They're the ones that we can count on to say something in those couple of seconds we wait . They're the ones that fill the silence .
We're like sweet talk away , but they are still shaping their ideas as they talk . Even they haven't had sufficient time to fully process things , but they're just talking anyway . Then those internal thinkers they're definitely not talking . They've had the same insufficient time , but they wouldn't feel comfortable responding like the external thinkers are .
So even if you are asking questions at the moment and you're pausing for a second to three and you're getting a few answers to your questions , it's likely that they're not going to be the best they could be , or the most meaningful or reflective of the knowledge or understanding in the room . So the solution to this is to just wait longer . Just wait longer .
Just by increasing the amount of time you actually give to students , you're going to allow them to actually process the information and formulate a question if needed . So studies show that five to 15 seconds is actually more impactful , which , if anything like me and you immediately want to feel the silence is painful .
It does feel like a painfully long amount of time , but it actually feels so much worse for us than it really is in the moment . So I'll talk about it in two contexts when I'm giving instructions and then ask for questions . In that context I will say okay , you're right . Before we get started on that , what questions do you have ?
I'm going to give you 10 seconds to think . Sometimes I get no questions , sometimes I get a handful . But the most important thing is I haven't felt the need to rush it .
I haven't felt the need to fill that awkward silence and my students have the chance to actually just give it a little bit of a thing about what they'd like to ask before they ask it and just say , in the context of discussing a text , as an English teacher I might say to my students Lady Macbeth is trying to wash her hands , but the blood is indelible , it
won't wash off . What does that represent ? I'm going to give you 30 seconds now to have a think and I'm popping the timer on . And I will pop the timer on sometimes because that's less me going doo-do-do and standing up the front quietly and us kind of giving each other the side eye . It actually gives us something else to kind of refer to and look at .
Okay , so you have a challenge for the week and that challenge is just to tune in to how much time you're actually giving your students to think before responding . Extend that time , see how it impacts students moving into tasks with clarity . See how it impacts the questions that you're getting or the responses that you're getting .
See if they're more in-depth , see if they're thoughtful . See if you have responses from students that you usually never hear from because the external thinkers are always jumping in , but these internal thinkers that have had to have a little bit more time to formulate their answers finally go .
Eureka , I'm going to be sharing something now because I've had a chance to think it over and I feel more confident . Okay , that was your weekly behavior bite . I look forward to seeing you next week for another . Bye for now .
This behavior bite was brought to you by the Behavior Club , my wonderful membership for teachers , where every single month , I'm releasing training around a focus area . Quality resources to lighten the load in every sense of the word , a brilliant community that I'm in daily answering questions and giving personalized support , and just so much more .
So consider this my personal invite to come on in , take a look around , and I absolutely can't wait to see you there . Help you feel , help you feel confident , help you feel capable and just crush classroom management . Head to the-unteachablescom forward , slash TBC or find the link in the show notes . Me and my behavior .
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