Think-Pair-Share - 3 Significant Benefits of Using this High Impact Collaborative Strategy

Hi there!

First post in a while. Thanks for being here. Feels good to be back.

Think-Pair-Share is an excellent collaborative teaching strategy to add to your teacher tool kit (if it’s not already in there). I love this teaching move for almost any grade and for all types of learners. T-P-S is a simple yet highly effective strategy that you could start using tomorrow!

What is it?
Think-Pair-Share is exactly what its name implies. After asking a question to the class (from a simple question to a complex one), students are given time to think about the question and what their response might be. Students are then given time to share their thinking with a partner; usually someone in close proximity. Finally, students have the opportunity to share out to a larger group. This might be to the whole class or to a larger table group. The strategy is flexible and can be used in multiple ways, multiple times during the same class.

How to Use it
Think-Pair-Share is an excellent strategy to use during explicit teaching. Offer it multiple times throughout your lesson. Depending on your class and their energy level, adjust the amount of time given to think and share to best suit your learners. I know in some classes my teaching partners and I have been able to provide significant amounts of time to think and pair time. But most often, in classes where students might quickly get off topic, much shorter times for thinking and pairing up are provided. Sometimes, and for questions that are not very complex, we have given less than a minute for think time and the same for the time to share with partner. It sometimes take another 30 seconds to bring them all back together and settle them from their conversations.

This is where the flexibility of the strategy is highlighted. You will know when students are starting to get off task and you can adjust the time you give accordingly. Also, the more you practice this skill with students, the more familiar they get with it and less time eventually gets spent on transitions.

The Benefits
Think-Pair-Share has been promoted as an effective teaching strategy for a long time because it works. I know that as a classroom teacher I heard about T-P-S all the time but I never really cared to really understand it or use in the way it was intended. I wish I would have because using this strategy has so many positive outcomes.

1. Improved classroom management
   Think-Pair-Share is an excellent classroom management tool as it builds in small breaks for students. Spending long amounts of time listening to a teacher can cause students to become bored or distracted which can easily lead to issues with behaviour including talking out, talking to others while you’re still trying to teach or even acting out.

   If you start to notice your students tuning you out, starting to talk or being distracted, you can throw out a question and use T-P-S as an effective way to manage their energy.

2. Increased participation and engagement

   I probably rely on Think-Pair-Share for the purpose of increasing student participation and engagement the most. SO often I would ask my class a question, a few of the same hands would shoot into the air and those same students were always the ones to answer for the class. And I was grateful for them. Didn’t the class know this is the kind of participation from students I valued? What I didn’t realize I was doing by calling on those lightning fast hands in the air was stealing the chance for the rest of my class to participate in the learning because I had not even given them a chance. No chance to process my question. No chance to consider their ideas. No chance to formulate a response.

   T-P-S is a gift to students. It offers them a chance to participate because they are given the time to think and formulate (and discuss) a response. When students are given think time, they are far more likely to raise their hands. And they do!

3. Increased learning opportunities and equity for all students

   The most signification outcome of Think-Pair-Share is improved student learning. The most important outcome of all! When students are given time to think and time to share their thinking, learning outcomes improve for ALL.

Give Think-Pair-Share a try this week. Remember, it might take time for it to really get working for you and your students.

Bye for now,
Lori

Let’s chat in the comments…

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P.P.S. One of my teaching partners tried T-P-S with her class during her teacher appraisal this past week. So brave! I was so happy when she shared this with me. Then she told me the class just sat there and didn’t talk. Uh-oh. But when she followed up with her principal, she told him that she was just starting to use this strategy and she is confident it will start working soon. I love everything about this so much. This is a research-based strategy. Try it. Keep trying it. It will work!

P.P.P.S. (is this even a thing?) My mom does all of my editing.