Ideas for creating and overcoming student silences

Donald R. Woods and Heather Sheardown of McMaster University shares about various ideas of creating and overcoming student silences. Ideas are given for creating silences for individual active activities and creating silences with wait times, to provoke facilitated class discussion. Instructor can create silences by asking students to do individual work such as writing reflections, solving problems, or answering a test question. Wait times encourage students to participate in discussion instead of waiting for the teacher to answer his/her own question. Diads could also solve problems using the whimbey Talk Aloud Pairs Problem Solving, or TAPPS. Silence between students can be overcome by using a variety of diad and small group activities in class to actively engage students in the learning process.