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Teaching Critical Thinking- Think-Pair-Share. Clare Kilbane, Ph.D. ckilbane@otterbein.edu http://www.otterbein.edu/home/fac/ckilbane/stpius. Think-Pair-Share. Purpose: Promotes information processing, communication, and developing thinking skills.
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Teaching Critical Thinking- Think-Pair-Share Clare Kilbane, Ph.D. ckilbane@otterbein.edu http://www.otterbein.edu/home/fac/ckilbane/stpius
Think-Pair-Share Purpose: Promotesinformation processing, communication, and developing thinking skills. Skills That Can Be Built:Sharing information, listening, asking questions, summarizing others’ ideas, paraphrasing.
Applications: • Before a lesson or topic to orient the class (previous knowledge etc). • During teacher modeling or explanation. • Any time, to check understanding of material. • At the end of a teacher explanation, demonstration etc, to enable students to cognitively process the material. • To break up a long period of sustained activity. • Whenever it is helpful to share ideas. • For clarification of instructions, rules of a game, homework etc.
Positive Attributes: • Provides students “think time” • Includes everyone- it is hard to be left out of a pair! • Students are able to rehearse their responses • Students gain confidence in sharing their ideas • The class builds critical knowledge around individual responses
Steps • The teacher provides a question prompt to the students to which there may be a variety of answers. • Students are given time and instructed to think about the prompt individually • Students are instructed to share their thinking with their “learning partner” (may be intentionally assigned or for convenience) • The pairs share their answers with another pair or the whole class. • If the teacher asks students to share ideas with the class he/she may ask for contributions randomly or by asking for volunteers.
Open-ended (divergent) questions • invite opinions, thoughts and feelings; • encourage participation; • establish rapport; • stimulate discussion; and • maintain balance between facilitator and participant
Variations/Accommodations • Put up an overhead with steps • Have students work to come to consensus about their ideas • Have students share their partner’s ideas with the class rather than their own (this might make them listen more carefully) • Have students write thoughts from “thinking” on notecards or another graphic organizer and turn in to teacher (this allows the teacher to monitor individual thinking) • Use flexible grouping (ability, learning styles) • Provide scaffolding for the “thinking” part- laptop/ pencil and paper, additional questions