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STRATEGY FOCUS

THINK-INK-PAIR-SHARE

PURPOSE

Think-Ink-Pair-Share is an adaptation of the Think-Pair-Share strategy that adds an opportunity for students to engage in Writing to Learn prior to engaging in Academic Dialogue with a classmate. By allowing students time to think and then write (ink) about their response to a prompt or question, an expectation is communicated that everyone will have something to say and can participate. After thinking and writing, students then share their responses with a partner and engage in discussion about their ideas. They then make revisions to their original responses before sharing with a wider group.

PROCESS

  1. Present the class with an open-ended question or prompt, and provide them with time to think quietly about the question/prompt.
  2. Have students write their response to the question/prompt in order to organize their thoughts.
  3. Explain to students the process for sharing and discussing the question/prompt with a partner, and then group them in pairs.
  4. After discussing with a partner, students can then go back to their written response and make any revisions based on the discussion.
  5. Have students share ideas with the whole class, and encourage them to ask questions of each other in order to push thinking even further.
  6. (Optional) Ask students to go back to their writing one more time to revise or add reflections based on the whole-class sharing.

PROBING  QUESTIONS

CONSIDERATIONS

  • How did writing about your thinking first impact your conversation with another student?
  • How was your original thinking changed through sharing with another student?
  • What revisions do you need to make to your work as a result of this activity?
  • The use of a timer that everyone can see may help students focus and maximize their time during each step of the strategy.
  • Let students know at the beginning the expectations for revising responses as a result of discussing in pairs and/or sharing out with a larger group so that they will be prepared for that.
  • This strategy can be used at any point in a unit or lesson. Students could be asked to make predictions, compare and contrast ideas, or apply new learning to a real-life situation.

SCAFFOLDS

General Scaffolds

  • Model how to write a response.
  • Show student samples of responses.
  • Provide examples of what student responses might look like.
  • Provide sentence starters to help students get started.
  • Encourage and allow students to access and use vocabulary resources and tools such as anchor charts, word walls, word bank, and personal dictionaries.
  • Provide students with sufficient time to think and write.
  • Provide opportunities for students to respond in a variety of ways (e.g., pictures, text, mix of English and home language, etc.)
  • Have students share their Quick Write with peers, and have them share something their partner said rather than sharing their own thinking. This fosters active listening and accountability to the writing process.
  • Different types of texts can be used for this strategy. Instead of reading a passage, students watch a video clip or view images such as photographs or art.
  • Provide a sample prompt and do a think-aloud.
  • Model an example of what questions and responses might look/sound like prior to asking students to engage in strategy.
  • Provide additional wait time for students to process, think, write, read.
  • Provide sentence stems and frames to help students engage in Academic Dialogue with their peers. 
  • Provide opportunities for students to respond in a variety of ways (e.g., pictures, text, mix of English and home language)

Scaffolds for Multilingual Learners

Entering/Emerging:

  • Allow students to access and use vocabulary resources in order to recount, argue, and explain.
  • Model how to write a variety of responses.
  • Provide examples of what students’ responses might look like
  • Allow students to respond in a variety of ways (e.g., pictures, text, mix of English and home language, etc.).
  • Provide sentence stems/frames and graphic organizers.
  • Provide visual support (e.g., posters, photographs) for students to name and briefly describe objects, people, or places
  • Provide sentence stems and frames for stating main ideas and/or restating details of content-related topics, as well as connecting ideas to one’s experiences (in home language and English).
  • Provide time for students to think and create an oral response (in home language and English)
  • Model appropriate nonverbal behaviors to show engagement and listening

Developing/Expanding:

  • Model how to write a variety of responses (e.g., how to compare/contrast, describe a central idea, describe relationships between details or examples and supporting ideas, connect content-related themes or topics to main ideas).
  • Provide examples of information presented objectively with a neutral tone.
  • Provide graphic organizers (i.e., Main Idea/Detail Frame) to help students with organization of claims and evidence.
  • Model how to summarize evidence and evaluate and challenge evidence presented in an argument.
  • Provide examples of transitions to help students connect ideas.
  • Model examples of paraphrases and summaries that are presented orally.
  • Provide sentence stems and frames for questions.
  • Provide examples of clarifying questions that students might ask.
  • Model how to generate new questions to maintain conversations.

Bridging/Reaching:

  • Provide examples of research reports and summaries.
  • Model how to write a concluding statement that follows from and supports the information presented.
  • Model how to convey sequence and show relationships among experiences and events.
  • Model how to categorize details of main ideas seen and heard in videos and other technologies
  • Model how to sequence a series of illustrated events from oral passages (e.g., historical recaps)

CONTENT APPLICATIONS

ENGLISH/LANGUAGE ARTS

After reading an example of argumentative writing, students reflect on which claim was most effective and how the writer used language, structure, and word choice. They then share with a partner to discuss the choices made by the writer.

MATHEMATICS

Students record solutions to a problem on paper and share them with a partner. Ideas are then shared with whole class.  Finally, students return to their own paper, to revise and record final answer.

SOCIAL STUDIES

Students think/ink about all the things that can make a family move from one place to another. Then pair/share in preparation for a class discussion about connecting to the idea of geographic push and pull factors.

WORLD LANGUAGES

As students are learning vocabulary for describing personality and physical traits, ask them to use those vocabulary words to write about their favorite musician, actor, and/or athlete before sharing in a conversation with a classmate.

VISUAL & PERFORMING ARTS

Ask students to view and write down their thoughts on an impressionistic work of art, then share and compare their thinking with a partner.

CAREER & TECHNICAL EDUCATION

Students in the cinematography pathway prepare to discuss with a classmate an analysis of a video clip, focusing on how it was technically created and what they might have done differently.

HEALTH & PHYSICAL EDUCATION

Before learning about how exercise affects certain muscle groups, show students a specific exercise and have them write about what muscle group(s) are targeted, then share with a partner to compare their thinking.

SCIENCE

Physics students in the early stages of designing, building, and refining a device that works to convert one form of energy to another engage in a Think-Ink-Pair-Share to get feedback from from peers about their design.