Think Pair Share Strategy Essay

Think Pair Share Strategy Essay: Introduction

Think-pair-share is a formative assessment technique in which students work together to answer questions and complete the assignments. As its name signifies, this assessment consists of three steps, thinking, pairing, and sharing. The first step requires students to think individually about the topic or the assignment and then set groups. Lastly, they share their ideas with other students in the class. Sharing and discussing ideas with classmates boost participation, focus attention, and build speaking skills. In think-pair-share assessment, evaluation criteria must be discussed profoundly through analyzing student learning and giving feedback to guide further learning.

Body Paragraphs

In think-pair-share assessment, the objectives are activating prior knowledge of students while they think, enhancing their speaking skills, and making them active participants in learning. It is a cooperative learning technique which encourages students' participation in class and discussing technique both in small and large groups. Thanks to this assessment, there is more time for students to think, which makes them more comfortable. Also, the whole class involves this thinking and discussion assessment, and it increases all of their interpreting, relating, and incorporating skills.

The think-pair-share assessment allows students to work together to find a meaningful result for a class assignment. It creates a common goal for groups to enhance their own and other students' understanding. It allows students to encourage each other, help each other, give feedback, and motivate each other to achieve the mutual goal. Students also gain individual accountability and personal responsibility through think-pair-share assessment. It provides that students are responsible for their individual learning, and prevents them from avoiding work. Interpersonal and small group skills also an important part of this assessment because students must be efficiently communicated with each other and constructively solve the conflict. Research has shown the benefits of this assessment, such as increasing students' understanding and capability to incorporate and synthesize new findings. (Vogt, 2017) It also enhances academic achievement, social skills, self-esteem, critical thinking, problem-solving, and decision-making skills. Briefly, the think-pair-share strategy is a way to set cooperative learning into a classroom to allow students to actively process and establish a meaningful understanding of the given task.

Also, for English Language Learning students, the benefits of think-pair-share assessment are beyond measure. ELL students improve their language acquisition by discussing things with their peers. (Robertson, 2020) They get a chance to check their answers with their classmates and reduce the negative feeling of making mistakes. They learn other perspectives and other ideas against their own. They have extra time to think about that before they present their findings. The think-pair-share assessment is an advantageous technique that helps ELL students to take more time to process their thoughts often in two languages. On the other hand, besides these advantages, there are also common errors in the think-pair-share assessment as a result of students' lacks. Some students have a high level of anxiety, which causes them to hide from sharing ideas. They remain silent, which hampers their process of developing oral communication skills. Lack of vocabulary and critical thinking also hamper their discussion. Even if they have creative ideas, it becomes less effective due to poor vocabulary. Time limitation is also insufficient for students who work slower than others.

Feedbacks are essential to reduce these negations. Feedback must be goal-oriented, prioritized, actionable, student-friendly, ongoing, consistent, and timely. It guides students further learning to help them to gain more skills and knowledge. For ELL students, the teacher can give them feedback for their vocabulary to make it richer and abide by the time limitation. To abide by time limitation, they can adapt to one of the important principles of the direct method, using only the target language, not both. Feedback improves students' confidence, self-awareness, and enthusiasm for learning. All students can make mistakes, and like in the words of Yoda: "The greatest teacher, failure is."(Pircon,2019) It means by telling students their mistakes; the teacher helps them to fix for their further learning. Without feedback, they never learn what they are good at and what they are not. Briefly, if a teacher wants to make their students active learners, they need to give feedback and guide their learning process. Helping and guiding makes them feel more confident and happier. With positive feelings and supports, there is nothing students can not accomplish.

Think Pair Share Strategy: Conclusion

In conclusion, the think-pair-share technique is cooperative learning, which helps students to work together to accomplish a given task. With three steps, thinking, pairing, and sharing, students gain many skills like group skills or oral communication skills. Even if it has negations like time limitation or incomprehensibility because of poor vocabulary, it still has more positive sides. For instance, ELL students improve their language acquisition with this assessment. With the feedback that increases the accuracy of the lesson, students become more confident and enthusiastic about further learning. Thanks to the think-pair-share assessment, the teacher hears ideas of the whole class, including quiet students. The teacher also understands the whole class, and it makes giving feedback easier and more helpful. Shortly, with the think-pair-share assessment, the teacher reveals an effective lesson for all students.

References

Pircon, B. (2019, January 8). The Importance of Feedback for Student Learning.

Robertson, K. (2020, February 10). Increase Student Interaction with "Think-Pair-Shares" and "Circle Chats".

Think: Pair: Share. (n.d.).

Vogt, C. (2017, November 21). Benefits of the Think-Pair-Share Strategy.