Partner & Collaborative Strategies

Think Pair Share & Turn and Talk

Train your students first!

What Productive Talk Looks Like in Elementary Grades

• Model for students what you expect

• Have your students come up w/ideas for what makes a successful pair-share or group (see this article: Turning Around a Turn and Talk)

• Decide how to take turns

• Ask a question that requires some thought. Examples:

  • Partner A, tell your partner about one thing you remember about the character we met yesterday (or landform, adding numbers, parts of a flower, etc.). Time's up. Partner B, tell your partner a second thing you remember about the character.

  • Tell your partner the strategy you used to figure out today's math problem.

  • Why do you think the character said that?

  • Yesterday we learned about nouns. Come up with 6 nouns, write them down, take turns writing. Be ready to share your list with another pair.

Other helpful hints

• Time students as they share, and usually, make it short!

• Listen in to see if what they say (formative). You can't hear all pairs, so strategically pick a couple.

• Make them accountable (they write something, they draw something, they take turns talking, they share w/whole class in some way)

• Pair Share or Turn & Talk can be used in your intro, your lesson body, and/or in your lesson closing. It is good for review, for puzzling over something learned during the lesson, making predictions, figuring out the meaning of a new word using context clues, or making connections between content and their own life.

Teacher Toolkit Partner Practice Video examples of different strategies for partner work.

• Think Pair Share video & directions

• Turn and Talk older students

• Turn and Talk young students

Using the Think-Pair-Share Technique

14 ESL Pair Work Speaking Activities That Get Students Psyched (good for SL too)

Turning Around a Turn and Talk (Pair Share) "Is there any real communication going on? Are students understanding what their partners are saying? Do they even care? This year I decided to take a different approach to a turn-and-talk. I still loved its simple format, but I wanted a more authentic conversation to happen between students, so I'm trying to "turn around" a turn-and-talk so the focus is not on the talking, but on the understanding."

Creative Ways to Partner Students

Oracy in the Classroom: Strategies for Effective Talk - this one has alternatives to pair-share, turn & talk

Edutopia's Student Engagement Resource Roundup Lots of ideas & links here!