Eliciting keeps the thinking with learners and engages retrieval. It fails when there’s no context, too many possible answers, or the teacher fills the silence. Count to eight; then accept, shape, or tell.
Six steps
- Could a student realistically produce this? If not, present it.
- Build context first (situation, picture, mini-story) to narrow answers to one or two.
- A context students care about.
- A question with only one answer (CCQ-style), in graded language.
- Wait ~8 seconds, make eye contact, then nominate.
- Accept / praise and shape / tell after ~2 attempts. Then drill and board it.
- “A clean model beats a long, awkward extraction, and there’s no shame in it.”
Theory (Claude)
Wait time (Rowe) and the generation effect (producing an answer aids memory) support it; the 8-second figure is a heuristic.
Connections
CCQs and ICQs - check with evidence, not nods · Question purposefully - socio-psychological vs pedagogical questions · Doable demand at the learner’s next step