Why Do Teachers Wait Time?

Wait time is defined as the time between the teacher’s question asked and the response of the student. Wait time is important because some students may not understand the question therefore, the teacher may not get the best responses from students. Research says that normally teachers only wait one second before student’s response. The amount a time a teacher should wait is between three to five seconds. Research has been proven that when teachers wait three to five seconds, there is a change in student’s responses. One of the changes is that the number of student responses increases and the occurrence of non-responses decreases. Also, the increase in time allows students to have more evidence in support of their responses and more the child …show more content…
It also helps students be able to answer questions more accurately and it is used as an assessment too for teachers. Other reasons of why teachers should ask effective questions is to actively involve students in the lesson, increase motivation or interest, evaluate student’s preparation, and check on completion of work. In addition, reasons include to review previous lessons, nurture the insights of your students, and assess achievement of goals and to stimulate independent learning. There are also different types of questions that a teacher needs to ask. Bloom’s Taxonomy splits and identifies these questions into categories. The first two categories, knowledge and comprehension are consider lower levels. Knowledge questions are those questions pertaining to recalling data or information. Comprehension questions are questions that ask for the understanding the meaning of data. The last four categories of Bloom’s taxonomy are considered higher levels of. Those categories consist of application, analyzing, synthesis, and evaluation. Application questions ask students to use a concept in a new situation. Analysis questions are those questions that break concepts into parts. Synthesis questions combine parts of a concept to form a new meaning. Evaluation questions are questions that have students make judgements about a concept. Teachers should not ask lower questions because those questions do not allow for higher …show more content…
This helps the teacher to fairly assess her students and get a variety of responses. Sometimes in classrooms, students, who have the most confidence or that are the higher-achieving students, answer the majority of the questions. This is a negative characteristic because if those higher-achieving students always answer then, the teacher may have a false sense that he or she is being an effective teacher. Creating a system that helps to keep track of students called helps to make sure that all students have equal opportunities to answer questions. Several teachers use sticks with either the child’s name or number on to keep track of students called. After a student is called, they place the stick in another container. These sticks are called equity sticks. Also, if a student is not ready to respond when you call on them, allow the student to exchange their question with another student. However, do give the particular student another chance to