Time to Process

The estimated time for reading this post is 1.5 minutes.

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We have been walking through math classrooms for a couple of weeks now.  It has been great to see all the things students are doing in RUSD classrooms.  We walked into one classroom last week, just as the teacher was telling the students they had 5 minutes of quiet time to work on the task alone before they could discuss in their group.  The teacher came to me and sounded apologetic that we weren’t going to see some great 5 minutes of teaching.  I assured her that this was AWESOME!  I stayed to observe the groups, and with one minute of quiet time still left on the clock, I could see a few pairs begin to whisper about the task.  It was great to see students excited about the task.

Students need time to interact with the task on their own.  When we give students high cognitive demand tasks, they need time to process.  During that time, students will create unique and different ways to attack the task.  This will generate group discussions that are much more robust.  If you find the group conversations are being monopolized by a few strong students with firm beliefs, try allowing ALL students time to process before they come together as a group to discuss the task.