OTRs are specific and instructionally deliberate invitations to students to provide a verbal, written or gestural response to a prompt. The teacher is then able to provide feedback and pivot the lesson based on student responses. Providing high rates of OTRs in an effective instructional strategy to increase on-task behaviour, decrease off-task and disruptive behaviour, and improve academic outcomes for all students.
Verbal Responses
To ensure all students are thinking and are prepared to respond, ask the question first, pause to provide wait-time and then select a student to respond. Think Pair Share (TPS) and Turn and Talk (T&T) are most used across the school for eliciting high quality verbal responses from students.
Choral Responses
Questions for choral responding are prepared in advance and can be visually presented via PowerPoint slides or other visual cues. Whole class reading provide opportunities for students to engage chorally; reading along with a passage and/or chip-in reading where teachers pause waiting for students to read the next word, phrase or sentence as a whole class.
Non-Verbal Responses
Have all the benefits of choral responses in that every student is provided the opportunity to think and respond. Utilising individual whiteboards that allow students to write answers to teacher questions, which are then displayed on teacher cue is an easy way to increase the number of students responding in any given moment. Another non-verbal response system is response cards, at Gillen Red Card/Green Cards are used in all classes from Preschool to Year 6.