Think, Pair, Share
We had our final Teaching and learning breakfast morning for the 18/19 academic year this month. This month we are using Think, Pair, Share and randomisers as out strategy in class.
Think, Pair, Share is a strategy designed to provide students with time and structure for thinking on a given topic. It enables them to develop individual ideas and then share these ideas with a peer.
Safety is a very important part of any classroom and think, pair, share helps provide this. It promotes confidence and helps prevent one person dominating a group as everyone has to share their thoughts with each other and then the rest of the class. This can be used in class to introduce a new topic, in the middle of a topic or to aid revision.
Three steps are important
-Ask a specific higher order question about a topic
-allow approx. 3 minutes to think and answer individually
-pair discussion for 2 to 5 minutes, deciding then among themselves who is going to share back to the whole class.
-feedback from the whole class could be collected and jotted down as a summary to support homework.
Randomisers
Our second strategy that we discussed for this month ensures all students have an equal opportunity to participate and share their responses in class. It activates student voice across the class. The random drawing of student’s name may also help with classroom management. Students will remain on task, waiting to see will they be asked a question. Everyone is included and it helps those students who want to disengage in a class.
Examples of how we can use this in our classrooms include
- Using lollipop randomiser sticks with each student’s name on a stick and randomly selecting these.
- Groupmaker app
- Classtools.net creates a wheel that spins with each student’s name on the wheel.
- You could also ask random questions, such as ‘The person in the group with the longest hair to answer, student whose birthday is in September, etc.
