Karen, There is no set amount of time to see if students have any questions, just go on your professional judgement. One guide you can follow is to deliver a key concept or content area then pause to see if there are any questions. To avoid the sound of crickets (which by the way is an awful sound for instructors or least it is to me) ask a question and then put the students into learning groups of 2-3 and have them discuss among themselves possible answers. Then have someone from the group report out their collective answers. This gets accountability into the answer and also gets them talking among themselves so they get the opportunity to immediately use the new information they have been given. You don't have to make a big deal of putting the students into groups, you can have them turn to the person next to them or those 2-3 people nearest to them. This way they don't have to move out of their seats and you can call them back together easily when you want them to report out and you move to the next segment. Gary