Bolstering Effortful Thinking With Think, Ink, Pair, Share

It’s a common scenario: A teacher poses a question, a few students raise their hands, one is selected to share a response, and class moves on. Tight time limits and a gauntlet of content to cover can make this seem like a necessary routine. However, there are certain questions that warrant giving the entire class time to answer thoughtfully. And it can be hard for a teacher to gauge who is actually doing the thinking when only a few students speak up. Enter Think, Ink, Pair, Share—a  classic classroom strategy with one added step that gives everyone in class a moment to process important content.

In Michele Cramer’s AP Psychology class at Frederick High School in Frederick, Maryland, students are preparing for the AP exam. They are reviewing a lesson about how memory works, content that could very well make an appearance on the exam later in the year. After posing a question about key processes, Cramer asks her students to take a moment to write out their responses. Students scribble away in their notebooks or scraps of paper before pairing up to share ideas with a partner. 

“We know from cognitive science that whenever a student writes as they are thinking through an idea, they are likely to process it more deeply.” explains Learning Science Partners’ Jim Heal, “And therefore they will have more chance of encoding and remembering that information in the future.”

For Cramer, the added step is well worth it. “It does take a little bit longer for everybody to answer the question, pair up with someone, share out. But it is the better practice,” she explains. “I can see that everybody is actually (hopefully!) effortfully thinking.”

For additional variations to boost the strategy’s value—including more ways to integrate a writing step like Think, Ink, Pair, Share does—read Todd Finley’s article for Edutopia, “16 Variations on Think-Pair-Share to Keep Students Engaged.”