Think-Pair-Share
Overview
Think-pair-share encourages meaningful student discussion by allowing for extra processing time and multiple shares. When learners think about a question or problem and then discuss their thoughts with a partner before sharing with the larger group, everyone participates and practices their literacy skills, including Argumentative Reasoning, Critical Literacy, and Metacognition.
Example: Use This Strategy in the Classroom
Learn how this high school teacher uses think-pair-share her classroom to encourage students to think about and share their thoughts with their peers. By using it as a warm-up and giving the option to write, students develop their Vocabulary.
Design It into Your Product
Videos are chosen as examples of strategies in action. These choices are not endorsements of the products or evidence of use of research to develop the feature.
Watch how Class Dojo builds think-pair-share into its classroom communication platform. From 16:58, see how it enables teachers to create prompts for students to discuss with their partners. This feature also allows students with varying Primary Languages to successfully discuss with a partner, which supports their language learning.
Additional Resources
Additional examples, research, and professional development. These resources are possible representations of this strategy, not endorsements.
Factors Supported by this Strategy
More Cooperative Learning Strategies
Students practice making and finding meaning in texts through book discussions moderated by teachers to varying degrees.
When peers are able to work together to plan, draft, edit, and revise during the Composition process, their writing quality improves.
Flexible grouping is a classroom practice that temporarily places students together in given groups to work together, with the purpose of achieving a given learning goal or activity.
As students move through multimodal stations pertaining to a particular unit, the social and physical nature of the activity supports deeper understanding.
As students work with and process information by discussing, organizing, and sharing it together, they deepen their understanding.
When students provide constructive feedback on each other's work, they learn to give relevant suggestions, receive specific ways to improve their writing, and engage in Metacognition.
Having students teach their knowledge, skills, and understanding to their classmates strengthens learning and increases Motivation.
When students explain to others, they deepen their understanding and gain confidence in their learning.
Bringing students' every day literacy practice of texting into the classroom provides regular, low-stakes practice communicating with authentic audiences.
Writing conferences allow students to fully immerse, share, reflect, and receive feedback during the writing process, promoting Motivation for continuing the sometimes lengthy revision process that occurs in the upper grades.
