Generating learning by providing Opportunities to Respond among the students.
- Roberto Duro
- Mar 2, 2020
- 2 min read
There are several educational strategies that can generate a classroom climate in which the students learn by being engaged and actively involved with the content. One of the most effective classroom practices that lead to this kind of learning consists on providing multiple Opportunities to Respond (OTR). What does this concept mean? In which way results beneficial for the students and teachers? How can it be applied?.
The concept of opportunities to respond is defined as the number of time the teacher provides academic opportunities that require students to actively respond (Miller, 2009; Sprick, Knight, Reinke, & McKale, 2006). Consisting these opportunities on an instructional question, statement or gesture made by the teacher seeking an academic response from students (Sprick, Knight, Reinke, & McKale 2006).
By applying this strategy, student engagement significantly increases, leading to a setting in which the students enhance their learning level by actively interacting with the content. In this new setting there is a bigger possibility of providing specific feedback, and the number of students behaving according to the expectations is higher.
At the time of applying this classroom practice, the teacher must identify these opportunitieswithin the lesson plan in order to generate situations and scenarios in which students can respond. One of the core purposes of this strategy is evolving from the “single student respond” practice, to a “multiple student respond”. This purpose can be approached in many different forms, such as class wide peer tutoring, response cards, or smart boards; but the most important goal that needs to be met is generating an opportunity for the student to inject with the content and provide a response.
The main organizational sequence that educators should follow when implementing the OTR strategy consists on a succession of an antecedent created by the teacher, followed by a behavior, leading to a resulting behavior.
Examples of Opportunities to respond (retrieved from pbismissouri.org).
When designing and implementing this practice, the teacher needs to adjust the different components of the strategy based on the level of the students, their current capacities, and the conditions in which the content is delivered. Some of these components refer to the wait time after asking a question, the amount of questions delivered by the teacher, or the cognitive level implied in these questions.
In conclusion, the strategy consisting on providing multiple opportunities to respond (OTR) generates a learning climate in which all students are taken in consideration and included in the process of acquiring a new knowledge and getting to know how to interpret and interact with it. As educators, teachers have the duty of making the class content accessible and reachable for all the students, and implementing the OTR strategy is a first step to make sure no child is left behind.
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