Think - Pair - Share

• Teacher asks a question or provides a prompt.
• Students are given time to THINK about their responses.
• Students PAIR up and discuss their responses.
• Student pairs SHARE their ideas with a larger group.

Variations

Think - Pair - Share My Partner's Thoughts

• During the "Think" stage, the teacher tells students to ponder a question or problem.
• During the "Pair" stage, students still discus their answer(s) or solutions, but know they will have to share their partner's thoughts, rather than their own, so they will listen more intently during the discussion.
• Teachers should use this activity as a formative assessment by listening to the conversations of each pair of students, more than the "Share" stage of this activity.

Think - Pair - Square - Share
This technique is used to get students to use higher level thinking and justify their reasoning.

• Think: Students are set a question and asked to think in silence for 2 minutes about their answer.
• Pair: This answer is then shared with the person next to them, the pair of students are asked to think of the "best" answer to take forward, and why it is the best.
• Square: Students are then asked to share their answers as a group of 3 or 4, depending on class size. This answer has to be communicated, with the reasons for the choice to the whole class. This is where the higher level thinking  comes in as students have to justify the decisions they have made.
• Share: Students feedback their group choices to the class as a whole, with the reasons for the choices that they have made.  If the problem posed does not have a "right" answer, the two student pairs can combine their results and generate a more comprehensive answer.

Think - Write/Draw - Share
Students write or draw their own ideas before they pair up to discuss them with a partner. This allows students to more fully develop their own ideas before sharing.

Tech Variations

Think - Tweet - Share
In the "Share" stage, students think of response and then generate a Tweet.

Think - Today's Meet - Share
Use this back channel to gather responses and then generate a discussion from answers.

Think - Pair - Wordle - Share
Teacher posses a question such as what are all the words you can think of to describe _____________. (character in book, historical figure, etc…) Students think individually, then share ideas with partner to develop one Wordle between the two of them. Then share with group.

Think - Blog - Respond

• Student begins by thinking of blog post ideas
• Student creates his/her own post
• Reader responds

The post becomes the “pair” on a much larger scale. Another aspect of the “pair” is that a blog post is meant to be read by another person. The author’s  ideas are shared through the post. When the reader responds, this is yet another venue for sharing understanding with the writer.