Think-Pair-Share

Top

00:00:14.13 So, I think about active learning
00:00:16.05 -- I think pair-shares is one example --
00:00:17.29 very much as a neurobiologist.
00:00:20.12 And when we as experts go into a class...
00:00:22.23 like, I'm gonna teach the class that I've taught
00:00:25.27 like five or six times before,
00:00:27.00 we know what's coming.
00:00:28.02 It's not a surprise to us.
00:00:30.05 But the students are there for the first time.
00:00:32.00 So, neurobiologically, they need more processing time
00:00:34.14 to understand what's going on in the room,
00:00:36.06 what the goals are,
00:00:37.27 than maybe we need.
00:00:39.15 And so, it's important to remember when you're teaching,
00:00:41.26 as an expert,
00:00:43.25 that the people sitting there are novices.
00:00:45.14 And that part of what's happening in their learning
00:00:47.17 is them actually changing their brains,
00:00:49.13 actually thinking about what they already know,
00:00:52.09 making new connections with ideas,
00:00:54.15 and making new connections synaptically
00:00:57.15 if it's... if those ideas that they're learning are gonna last.
00:01:00.19 Where did the oxygen atoms in that CO2 come from?
00:01:03.16 When you're exhaling it,
00:01:05.10 just before it comes out of your body as carbon dioxide?
00:01:07.25 When we're presenting a new idea in class,
00:01:09.29 it might seem really familiar to us as instructors.
00:01:12.18 But for students it's a new, novel idea.
00:01:14.20 And just giving them a chance to write for a minute,
00:01:18.02 and talk with a neighbor about it for a couple of minutes,
00:01:21.01 can give them just the processing time to uncover what they already know about that,
00:01:25.01 and even start to have questions bubble up
00:01:27.13 that they might want to bring to you as an instructor.
00:01:29.16 Alright, really quickly, turn to your neighbor.
00:01:31.06 What did you choose? And why?
00:01:39.18 If you think about using a think-pair-share,
00:01:41.18 that's one way to give people a chance to stop,
00:01:44.12 make a prediction, reflect.
00:01:46.04 There's no job they're gonna have
00:01:48.27 where they're somehow not gonna be asked
00:01:51.04 to talk about biology with other people.
00:01:53.00 So, I tell them, in this class, in intro biology,
00:01:55.14 now is the time to start practicing.
00:01:57.08 Right?
00:01:58.13 When you're an undergrad.
00:01:59.24 So that when you get to upper division classes,
00:02:01.05 when you get to post-graduate school,
00:02:02.25 you're very, very comfortable talking about biology
00:02:05.01 with lots of different kinds of people,
00:02:06.21 especially even people that you don't know.
00:02:09.07 I teach classes that range from 20 students to 270 students,
00:02:13.06 and I don't think there is ever a class session that I teach
00:02:16.21 where I don't do at least a couple of pair discussions.
00:02:20.10 Sometimes they are classical think-pair-shares,
00:02:24.11 where people have time to write, and then they have time to talk,
00:02:27.10 and then they share out.
00:02:29.09 Sometimes, I'll just notice in my lecture,
00:02:30.25 like, wow, I'm not sure if people are getting this.
00:02:32.28 And I'll stop and say, just turn to your neighbor and see if this is makin' any sense.
00:02:36.14 I'm gonna ask you a quick question.
00:02:38.27 From one glucose molecule...
00:02:41.16 I need you to... we're gonna go through one glucose molecule...
00:02:43.08 how many carbon dioxides are gonna get produced?
00:02:45.18 Six... three...
00:02:47.13 Six.
00:02:49.04 Okay, so talk with a neighbor, because I heard three, and I heard a lot of people that didn't answer.
00:02:51.13 Why would it be six?
00:02:53.09 Really loud, right?, thirty seconds,
00:02:55.10 why six carbon dioxides are gonna come off.
00:02:56.28 It's C6H12O6...
00:02:59.04 So, I think think-pair-shares...
00:03:00.11 you don't always have to do the thinking, the pairing, and the sharing
00:03:02.23 -- that's the optimal --
00:03:04.17 but you can use it as a really quick and easy tool
00:03:06.21 to let people check in or to just let people have a chance to think
00:03:11.02 about what's going on.
00:03:12.20 So, I'm gonna bring us back together.
00:03:15.11 So, in the spirit of time... I'm gonna give you some time to talk.
00:03:18.10 We're not gonna do reporting because we have to get through...
00:03:21.04 I think it's helpful to see all four of these in an hour.
00:03:23.13 Like, it's easier to kind of compare them if you've seen all four,
00:03:26.04 so I want to get through all four of them for you in one 50-minute class.
00:03:29.03 So, I'm going to tell you what I noticed here
00:03:31.15 and the kinds of things I want to alert you to.
00:03:33.07 There are lots of students who are eager to learn biology,
00:03:34.27 but they may not be confident in their learning of biology.
00:03:38.04 And giving them a chance to think, write out their ideas,
00:03:40.23 and then verbally rehearse that
00:03:42.26 -- share that with one other person in the room --
00:03:45.13 can give them the confidence they need to raise their hand
00:03:48.07 and present their ideas to the whole class, or ask a question.
00:03:51.18 I mean, how many times have we been in a seminar,
00:03:53.28 thinking, Oh, I have this great question,
00:03:55.27 but maybe I missed something.
00:03:57.11 Maybe they already addressed that.
00:03:59.02 And if you just have a minute to check in with the neighbor,
00:04:00.16 and they say, Wow, that's a great question.
00:04:02.06 Then that can give students, just like people in lots of different settings,
00:04:06.21 the confidence to bring their ideas forward to the group.
00:04:09.05 Rachel.
00:04:10.26 So, would you say that acetyl-CoA is the other...
00:04:14.00 the only other key molecule that can be used for...
00:04:16.28 So, when I introduce my students to think-pair-share,
00:04:20.12 one of the really important things that I think I say to them
00:04:22.23 is that for some people talking with a neighbor in class
00:04:25.27 is gonna be very much in their comfort zone.
00:04:28.07 They're extroverts; they're gonna like talking about biology with other people.
00:04:31.08 For other people in the class,
00:04:33.05 they may be way out of their comfort zone
00:04:35.10 when I ask them to talk to someone else.
00:04:37.06 And just acknowledging that
00:04:39.04 -- that for some people this is gonna be a hard thing to do,
00:04:41.07 and that you appreciate them going out on a limb and getting out of their comfort zone,
00:04:45.20 and reassuring them that the reason that we're doing it is to try
00:04:49.10 and promote their learning and to try and help them be the best professional
00:04:52.05 in the biological sciences they can be --
00:04:53.25 is usually something that increases the receptivity of students
00:04:57.08 to being asked to do something that they may not normally
00:05:00.04 be used to doing in a science class.
00:05:02.13 Please talk to your colleagues.
00:05:04.11 You can do it, Kevin. Go talk to Makayla.
00:05:07.21 And don't exclude that lovely person who's smiling over there.
00:05:10.06 What instructors are usually doing
00:05:13.03 is looking around the room, seeing who's talking and not talking,
00:05:14.29 maybe eavesdropping in on conversations.
00:05:16.16 That's really, really valuable to do.
00:05:18.18 And oftentimes, if you see students who aren't in pair discussions with someone else,
00:05:23.06 all you need to do is to go over...
00:05:25.01 I usually kneel down and say, hey,
00:05:27.08 could you turn and talk to your neighbor about that?
00:05:28.28 I think you probably have really great ideas to share,
00:05:30.27 and I know that they would appreciate you joining the conversation.
00:05:33.01 Did you talk to somebody about this?
00:05:35.03 Yeah. Explain... explain B to these guys.
00:05:39.25 Can you include this guy in your conversation?
00:05:42.01 'Cause even people who've really got this...
00:05:44.11 they goofed on B.
00:05:46.22 Alright? Scooch over... move a coat... whose coat is that?
00:05:50.01 You can't always get everyone in a classroom doing a pair-share.
00:05:53.11 So, when I look out in a pair-share,
00:05:55.08 there are always certain students that maybe are not quite engaged.
00:05:58.23 And sometimes all it takes is that sort of personal reaching out
00:06:01.11 and encouragement
00:06:03.06 to really get a super-shy student into a group.
00:06:07.06 So, when you're first starting out with think-pair-shares,
00:06:09.25 you just want to come up with a question
00:06:12.02 -- and hopefully a question that you haven't really addressed in class --
00:06:16.00 that you give students to consider, think about what they already know,
00:06:19.28 and talk to a neighbor.
00:06:21.12 Now, when you... after you have them write or think about it for a minute,
00:06:23.20 and you start to have them discuss,
00:06:25.29 one of the key things to listen for is the noise.
00:06:28.24 So, if the noise in the classroom gets really loud,
00:06:31.09 that's usually a sign the students are really engaged.
00:06:34.11 It's a... it's a very provocative question.
00:06:36.16 The people in the pairs
00:06:39.04 have lots of things to say about it.
00:06:55.28 Sometimes, you'll ask a question where people don't have that much to say.
00:06:58.21 Or they maybe don't quite understand the question.
00:07:01.18 And so, if that happens, and the noise comes right back down,
00:07:04.01 you might want to intervene,
00:07:05.27 ask if you need to clarify the question.
00:07:07.20 Or you might just want to move on.
00:07:09.15 When the noise gets really high, and students are talking and talking,
00:07:11.14 and you have to interrupt them to bring them back together,
00:07:13.20 that's when you know you've asked a really great pair-share question,
00:07:15.26 and you're gonna have a lot of people interested to share
00:07:18.08 and interested to hear what you think about it as an instructor.
00:07:23.12 Alright. I'm hearing the noise crash out.
00:07:29.03 So, when I hear the noise go down,
00:07:32.28 especially if I hear, like, "Oh, did you see that movie?", and the noise goes up,
00:07:36.14 then I know it's time to go on.
00:07:38.12 So... we're gonna go on.
00:07:40.12 I had a colleague who said, "You know, Kimberly, I don't understand.
00:07:42.15 When you do a pair-share, it gets really loud in here.
00:07:44.18 When I do a pair-share, they stay kind of quiet.
00:07:46.16 Why is that?"
00:07:48.08 And I had to tell her I had no idea.
00:07:50.03 But we worked together over the course of the semester,
00:07:51.28 and what she noticed was whenever I did a pair-share,
00:07:54.24 I would actually tell them it should get really loud in here
00:07:58.16 for two minutes.
00:08:00.05 Why would it be six?
00:08:01.23 Really loud, right?, 30 seconds,
00:08:03.20 why six carbon dioxides are gonna come off.
00:08:05.21 So, really loud, can you fill in any of those questions
00:08:08.12 right now with a buddy for the first row of glycolysis.
00:08:10.11 One minute, really loud.
00:08:12.17 And so, I have to get really loud...
00:08:14.00 what were your predictions, and I want predictions for each one of those tubes.
00:08:16.16 Really loud. So, you got four things to talk about,
00:08:18.20 maybe a minute and a half.
00:08:20.12 So, think-pair-shares aren't only for classroom situations.
00:08:22.14 Think-pair-shares are for any situation
00:08:25.00 where you want to give other people a chance
00:08:27.05 to stop and think and make a prediction,
00:08:30.07 or have sort of an idea of their own before you give them information.
00:08:33.27 I've used a think-pair-share in a research seminar to great effect.
00:08:39.06 So, people were very engaged.
00:08:41.13 They were very willing to kind of grapple with a question,
00:08:43.15 and try and make a prediction about how students might be thinking about something,
00:08:45.21 before I actually showed them the raw data
00:08:48.18 from how students were thinking.
00:08:50.15 So, I think as scientists,
00:08:52.18 we want to think beyond our classrooms.
00:08:54.12 Strategies like think-pair-share
00:08:56.11 are just about trying to give people
00:08:59.01 the synaptic processing time to think about new ideas,
00:09:01.12 regardless of whether or not you're an undergraduate
00:09:03.13 or you're a Nobel Prize-winning scientist.

This Talk

Audience:

Educators of H. School / Intro Undergrad
Educators of Adv. Undergrad / Grad

Recorded: July 2014

Talk Overview

Think-Pair-Share is an active learning technique that can be used in small or large enrollment courses to engage students and encourage them to practice scientific thinking skills. In think-pair-share, students think about their answer to a question, pair with a partner to debate their choice, and then share their answers with the class. In this video showing examples of think-pair-share in action, Kimberly Tanner (San Francisco State University) shares her experience using this method in classrooms of all sizes.

Educators featured in this video: Laura Burrus, San Francisco State University; Kimberly Tanner, San Francisco State University; Robin Wright, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

What did you think about this video?