Think, pair, share: the strategy step by step with ready questions

Definition

Think-pair-share: A three-stage discussion strategy: each student thinks about a question alone, then discusses their answer with a partner, then pairs present what they reached to the whole class.

Here are the steps with their minutes and what you say at each one, the sentence starters students use, a way to pair a class of 40 without anyone moving, and twelve ready questions from different subjects. At the end: what research says about it, and when not to use it.

The steps, their minutes, and what you say

ReadWriteThink, from the US National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), suggests one to three minutes for thinking and two to five for the pair discussion. We suggest starting at the short end of both: one minute to think, two for the pair, three to share, and half a minute to close. Give the thinking longer when the question needs a calculation or some reading.

1. 1

   Before the lesson: write one question

   One with more than one defensible answer, or one that exposes a common misconception. Put it on the board or a slide so it stays in front of students the whole time. There are twelve ready questions in this post.

2. 2

   Think: one silent minute

   Say: “You have one minute. On your own, answer in pen in your notebook. No talking until I say ‘pair’.” The written answer is what makes every student think, not just the fastest. Walk around during the minute and look at notebooks, not faces.

3. 3

   Pair: two minutes with your deskmate

   Say: “Turn to your partner. A starts, then B. In the last thirty seconds, write one sentence together: what you agreed on, or where you disagreed.” When the two minutes are up, use the stop signal: “3, 2, 1, pens down.”

4. 4

   Share: three minutes for three or four pairs

   Say: “I'm drawing pairs at random. One of you reads your sentence, and if the idea was your partner's, say so.” Write what each pair says on the board in their words, then ask the class: “Who wrote something different?”

5. 5

   Close with one sentence of your own: 30 seconds

   Sum up what came out in one sentence, correct any mistake that appeared, and move on. If the same mistake came from more than one pair, that is what you reteach now, not next lesson.

Sentence starters: what students say in the pair and to the class

A student who doesn't know how to begin goes quiet, or says “same as you”. A sentence starter gives them the beginning; they finish it with their own idea. We suggest putting four of them on a sheet beside the board and changing them every two weeks, rather than showing them all at once.

The last one matters more than it looks: it makes “we don't know” an acceptable answer with a second half, so a pair does not freeze when the draw picks them.

How to pair 40 students in a minute

Don't move anyone; the pair is the deskmate. The figure shows a room of four rows, each with five double desks.

• Name the roles once: whoever sits on the window side is A, whoever sits on the door side is B. No names, no lists; the seat is enough.
• Swap who starts: A starts today and B tomorrow, so the faster student does not get used to always going first.
• Desks for three: if three students share a desk, the first two are a pair and the third turns to the third student at the desk behind. A third student in the back row joins the nearest pair.
• An absent partner: the one left joins the next pair as a three. One or two threes do no harm; more than that means you should re-pair.
• The first time: practise the routine with a question unrelated to the lesson, such as “What is the best time of day to study, and why?” Three minutes once saves explaining the routine in every lesson after.
• Keep pairs fixed: change them when you change the seating plan, not every lesson; a steady pair learns the routine faster.

This strategy only tells you what the pairs you hear are thinking. If you want to know what every student in a large class understood, read a crowded class: checking what every student understood in five minutes.

Three things that stop it turning into chatter

When the activity turns into side conversation, the cause is usually one of three: nobody knows when the discussion ends, nothing is due at the end of it, and nobody expects to be asked. Each has a fix.

1. One stop signal the class knows: a countdown out loud (“3, 2, 1, pens down”), or a raised hand that students copy as they fall silent. Practise it in the first week until the whole class stops within seconds, and keep the time left written on the board during the discussion.
2. A written product from every pair: one sentence in the notebook or on a slip, using “We agreed that…, and we disagreed about…”. A pair that knows it must write something in the last two minutes starts with the question, not with something else. If there is no time to hear everyone, collect the slips and read them after the lesson.
3. A draw, not raised hands: in “Classroom Assessment: Minute by Minute, Day by Day” (ASCD, November 2005), Dylan Wiliam describes the classroom norm “no hands up, except to ask a question”, and choosing students at random with a device such as a beaker of Popsicle sticks with their names on them. We suggest doing the same with pairs: write the desk numbers 1 to 20 on sticks or slips and draw from them. When every pair knows it might be asked, every pair gets ready.

Walk around during the two pair minutes and listen to three or four pairs. If you hear a common mistake, note it and put it to the class yourself after the draw, without saying who said it: “I heard someone say… What do you think?”

Twelve ready questions from different subjects

A good question for this strategy has more than one defensible answer, or exposes a common misconception. SERC at Carleton College (January 2007) notes that open-ended questions are more likely to generate more discussion and higher-order thinking. A question with a one-word answer needs nothing more than mini whiteboards. We wrote these questions for this post and the grades beside them are rough; adjust them to your lesson and textbook.

For a maths lesson, you will find think-pair-share run on a ratio lesson, next to four other strategies, in active learning in a maths lesson.

Where it came from, and what research says about it

A study published in PRiMER in January 2024 describes think-pair-share as a cooperative learning structure developed in K-12 education, and cites for it a chapter by Frank Lyman, “The responsive classroom discussion”, published in 1981 in Mainstreaming Digest by the University of Maryland College of Education.

In the same study, the authors tried the strategy with first-year students at a US medical school, in three discussion groups of seven or eight. Students who usually took part less were more vocal during the share stage. Of those who answered the survey, 91.7% found the think time helpful and 72.7% found the partner discussion helpful. But the sample is small, as the authors themselves say (23 students answered the survey), and they were university students, not schoolchildren. So don't carry the numbers into your classroom; take from it what to watch for yourself: who talks during the share stage, and whether that changes after two weeks.

When not to use it

• When the question has one short answer: a question like “What is $7\times 8$?” needs no partner. Ask for the answer on mini whiteboards and you see every student's answer in seconds.
• Before students know enough to discuss: discussing an idea that has not been taught yet becomes guessing for two. Model with an example first, then ask the question.
• In the middle of silent practice: don't break up independent practice with a discussion; put the discussion before it or after it.
• More than twice a lesson: we suggest once or twice. A routine repeated too often stops being taken seriously, and the first thing lost is the thinking minute.

Written with String's editorial team: we use AI for research and first drafts, and a person checks every fact and every source before anything is published. How we write