Think-Pair-Share
Ask your students to get together in pairs. If need be, have some of the students move. If you have an odd number of students, allow one group of three. It's important to have small groups so that each student can talk. Open-ended questions are more likely to generate more discussion.
- Ask a question.
- Give students a minute to two (longer for more complicated questions) to discuss the question and work out an answer.
- Ask for responses from some or all of the pairs.
Examples of think-pair-share questions include:
- Describe and interpret the image.
- Before we start talking about global warming, have there been periods warmer than the present in the past? If so, when did such periods occur and what is the evidence? After responses are collected, and possibly a short lecture on climate history: How do we know what the climate was like before people started keeping track?
- From the data provided, what was the rate of the chemical reaction?
- What kinds of jobs do you think require people with knowledge of Calculus?
You can use the student responses as a basis for discussion, to motivate a lecture segment, and to obtain feedback about what your students know or are thinking.
Write-pair-share, a variation of think-pair-share, gives students a chance to write down their answer before discussing it with their neighbor. You may wish to collect written responses from each student or each pair before or after discussing the answer.
Advantages of the think-pair-share technique are that
- it's quick
- it doesn't take much preparation time
- the personal interaction motivates many students with little intrinsic interest in science
- you can ask different kinds and levels of questions
- it engages the entire class and allows quiet students to answer questions without having to stand out from their classmates.
- you can assess student understanding by listening in on several groups during the activity, and by collecting responses at the end
References and Further Reading
Lyman, F., 1987, Think-Pair-Share: An expanding teaching technique: MAA-CIE Cooperative News, v. 1, p. 1-2.
King, 1993 , From Sage on the Stage to Guide on the Side, College Teaching v. 41 no. 1 p. 30-35
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