9 Ways to Teach Students the Value of Slow, Methodical Thinking

In an age of instant gratification—Google searches in seconds, ChatGPT responses that complete your thoughts before you finish thinking them—all of us, students included, develop an appetite for speed and efficiency. 

That’s not necessarily a problem. Speed has real value. Instinctive, reactive thinking is essential for survival, and when students are learning, intuitive responses sometimes serve them well—when connecting two seemingly unrelated ideas in an “aha” moment, for example, or quickly reconciling apparently contradictory sentences as we “sense” their deeper coherence.

But an overreliance on fast thinking can also lead to sloppy errors, snap judgments based on incomplete information, and overconfidence which rests, ultimately, on a partial understanding, writes Jennifer Reifsteck, the school and teacher programs manager at the National Museum of Asian Art. “Studies have shown that visitors of all ages spend an average of 15 to 30 seconds in front of a work of art,” she says. “A good portion of that time is spent reading the label. We get the gist, and we move on. Is that how your students approach school?”

Rather than steering students away from fast thinking entirely, creating space for slower, more intentional thinking can help develop their ability to recognize when to pause and think more deliberately. For example, the opening minutes of a class period can be a critical window to help students shift from the rapid, reactive thinking of hallway transitions into a more focused, analytical mindset. 

That transition can be uncomfortable for kids; our brains have to work harder and expend more energy to think slowly, but it can restore a sense of proportion to the task at hand, and help students identify the right cognitive tool, as well. 

Establish a Distant Horizon: Many students struggle to see that simply answering a question or completing an assignment isn’t the ultimate goal, writes elementary school teacher Kady Dupre. Thinking this way “leads to rushing through work, racing to be the first one finished, and looking forward to the next activity rather than focusing on the task at hand,” Dupre says. 

To slow down their internal clocks, student writers can be taught to think of their first draft as the beginning of a longer sequence of work—and this spirit of revision and improvement applies across all learning. Dupre has outlawed the words I’m done from her classroom, encouraging students instead to ask questions like:

• How can I make this better?
• What parts should I reread? 
• How can I check this work?

Dupre provides clear examples when working on math problems, too, in the form of anchor charts that serve as reminders to students: “I’m not done because I can read each problem 2-3 times; show my work and thinking; try solving another way.” This encourages students to stop and deliberately evaluate the quality of their work—each pass allowing for deeper refinement. 

Hit the Pause Button: Most people—not just students—struggle to slow themselves down when it benefits them most. Occasionally infusing assignments with explicit pauses reminds students to reflect and reassess as they work, writes high school English teacher Georgia Stephenson.  

After writing a paragraph or two of their persuasive speeches, students in Stephenson’s class tape a “pit stop” tab to their paper featuring a prompt that asks them to be mindful while crafting their argument. A typical prompt may say, “Are you using a range of persuasive techniques? Find and highlight at least three in the paragraph(s) above.”

Take a Metacognitive Break: “Embedding metacognitive tasks into the learning process” can be helpful, preventing students from overestimating their mastery of a concept or skill, says high school English teacher Marcus Luther. Ask students to “stop midway and reflect on their level of confidence,” using a 1-5 scoring scale to assess their own mastery of what they have recently completed. 

Pausing to ask students to identify where they are struggling—what was the most confusing to me about the work in class today?—forces a mental brain dump where they’ll sift through the material to assess the “muddiest point.” This work prevents students from developing a good enough mentality, or assuming they understand and moving along, and reminds them to actively assess whether their comprehension meets the highest standards.

Think and Wait—and Wait Some More: In any classroom, you can count on a mixture of internal and external thinkers—students who either “prefer to silently process the content” or “talk or express their thinking with an audience as a sounding board,” writes educational consultant John McCarthy. 

While external thinkers may answer a question within seconds, more often than not they haven’t allowed themselves sufficient time to process their thoughts before speaking. Meanwhile, McCarthy says, “the internal thinkers have also had insufficient time to process, but don’t feel comfortable responding.”

It might feel awkward, but try leaving a little extra breathing room before calling on someone. For simple recall questions which students should know the answer to, McCarthy suggests giving students between five and 15 seconds to formulate a response. “Not every learner processes thinking at the same speed,” he explains. “Quality should be measured in the content of the answer, not the speediness”—and quality takes time. You should see a few hands raised by the time you count to 10 or 12 seconds in your head, but if students remain silent by the time you get to 15, you can start calling on kids. 

Questions that require students to plumb greater depths—“requiring analysis to synthesize concepts into a different construct or frame”—deserve processing time of anywhere between 20 seconds to two minutes, McCarthy says. “Giving such chunks of time honors the work being asked of students,” he explains. 

Pause Before Sharing Information: You’re often the expert in the room and already have the answers, but rather than rushing to provide context or explanation when kids look uncertain, Reifsteck suggests hearing what your students have to say first. 

“Allow time for them to make their own observations and interpretations,” she says. “You’ll be giving them time to pique their curiosity and ask questions.”

For example, instead of explaining prime numbers directly, show a sequence of numbers and ask students to notice patterns and develop questions. In this case, students can’t rely on you to do the thinking for them; they must actively engage.

Hit the Woods: The rush of the school day doesn’t provide many opportunities to stop and smell the roses, but nature journaling models the importance of close observation of the world around them, from the intricate vein patterns of a leaf to the drops of dew suspended from a spider’s web. All students need is a notebook, pencil or pen, and permission to linger. 

Elementary school teacher Sarah Keel encourages students to find an outdoor “sit spot”—in a public park, their yard at home, or a quiet corner of the school playground—where they can spend 20-30 minutes making observations. To spark initial thinking, provide prompts like “What do you see, hear, or smell?” and “Did you observe any plant and animal interactions?”

Look Once, Twice, Thrice: A second or third look often reveals layers of detail and subtle nuances students initially overlook. Repeated observation allows them to move past surface-level impressions.

One of Harvard’s Project Zero thinking routines, called Looking 10 Times Two, requires students to choose an image or object to focus on for 30 seconds, writing down 10 descriptive words or phrases. Students then repeat the process, recording 10 more observations. “This routine helps students slow down and make careful, detailed observations by encouraging them to push beyond first impressions and obvious features,” the authors at Project Zero explain.

High school English teacher Tanner Jones has seen the value of this type of work first hand: “As they spend more time and run out of obvious things to say, the observations become more nuanced and even beautiful: ‘The leaf is a heart with veins receding in size from the central stem.’”

Demand Evidence: In math classrooms, it’s a norm that students show their work, writes high school social studies teacher Chris Kubic, but he’s realized the value of this concept in many areas of study. When students provide an answer to a question, Kubic likes to ask the same follow up: How do you know…? 

“Students have to not only consider evidence and alternative answers but also support their thinking,” he says. It moves the initial question “into higher levels of thinking” while slowing down the pace of his inquiry and generating “additional depth from students’ answers.”

For example, when asked which event came first—the bombing of Pearl Harbor or the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki—one student replied that Pearl Harbor was first because “it was in 1941 and the bombs were in 1945.” But Kubic pushed further: “Yes, but without looking at the dates, how do you know that Pearl Harbor had to be before the atomic bombs?”

Flip Their Thinking: One of high school English teacher Cathleen Beachboard’s favorite ways to slow down thinking involves asking students to reverse their thought process. After building a strong argument, she might ask How would you argue the opposite? 

“Reversing a task enhances cognitive flexibility—the brain’s ability to shift between perspectives,” she writes. “By slowing down to reverse the flow of thought, we enhance metacognition and strengthen students’ ability to transfer skills across contexts, building stronger neural pathways.”

A small shift can have a big impact, she says. After students complete a task, consider asking them:

• What would the opposite look like? 
• Could we get here another way?
• What’s a common mistake someone might make here?