Teaching Ideas: Using Think-Pair-Share as a Formative Assessment in the Classroom

Strategic questioning is a type of formative assessment. When students answer questions, you gain valuable insight into their understanding. Well designed questions encourage students to think deeper about the material at hand. Usually, though, when teachers ask questions, a few students often dominate the discussion. It's difficult to get a sense of what the other students understand. One formative assessment tool that helps solve this problem is known as think-pair-share. What exactly is think-pair-share and what does it look like in the classroom?

Think-Pair-Share: What Is It?

Think-pair-share is an active learning strategy that can be used in all classes and content areas. It is a way to get students to cooperatively think about reflective questions. Reflective questions require high level thinking such as analysis and synthesis as opposed to simple recall of facts.

Think-Pair-Share: How Does It Work?

Think-pair-share can be used for a single question or for a series of questions. First students quietly think about a question given by you, teacher. They think about this question by themselves. If you choose, you can have the students write out their answers. You can give them anywhere from a minute to no more than five minutes, depending on the complexity of the question. Often, teachers don't give students more than a few seconds to think before making a response. Think-pair-share naturally slows this process down.

Second, students pair with a partner to share and discuss their responses. The pairs of students decide which answer is the best.

Last, students share their answers with the whole class. The teacher randomly calls on students. The randomness makes sure that students remain ready to share. The answers from the pairs can be recorded for the whole class.

Think-Pair-Share: Additional Suggestions

Students should be assigned and not allowed to pick their partner. You should have several techniques ready to use so that the pairing goes smoothly and quickly. Change these partners frequently. Students can pair with their neighbor one time and with the student across from them the next. There are numerous other strategies to pair students.

Walk around the room to listen to and monitor the discussion. Record anecdotal records as you walk around as an additional formative assessment during this activity. Any misunderstandings that you notice within the pairs can be cleared up during the whole class discussion.

Your students will enjoy and benefit from think-pair-share. You will see that it is an easy way to implement formative assessments in your classroom. Teaching with this cooperative learning strategy will yield useful data that will help in planning future lessons.

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