Moving from Pair Share to Small Groups

I've tried to capture below the Mary Anne version of steps for initiating the pair share process; then moving from two to a small group of four.  Remember, there's flexibility in every strategy.  Hope you find this helpful!

Process:

1. The teacher poses a problem, presents a piece of text or asks an open-ended question to which there may be a variety of answers.
2. The teacher gives the students ‘think time’ and directs them to think about the question, or the teacher gives students time to read and think about the assigned text.
3. Following the ‘think time’ students turn to face their partner and work together to sharing ideas and information (discussing, summarizing, clarifying information.) 
4. The pairs then share their ideas with another pair. It is important that students be able to share their partner’s ideas as well as their own.
5. The teacher monitors pairs and small groups and becomes a filter to determine which ideas will be shared with the whole class.

A Few Tips for Mastering the Strategy:

·      There is no magic amount of think time and pair time.  In general, depending on the complexity of the task, you want to give students just enough time to think and to generate some ideas with their partner, but not enough time to get off-task.

·      Give a specific task when asking the students to pair.  For example, say “Take ten seconds to talk with your partner and come up with one answer to the question” or “Talk with your partner for thirty seconds and see if you can come up with two solutions to the problem.” 

·      When reading a piece of text you’ll need to allow more time for partner sharing depending on the length and complexity of the text.  Set the time for text reading; then give instructions for pair sharing.  A simple, “Each of you has thirty seconds to share the key ideas from your text with your partner” is fine.  With younger students, thirty seconds is a long time to summarize key points of a text.  For older students, two minutes is a reasonable goal to eventually attain.  Start with shorter amounts of time and build up!

·      When it comes time for the students to share their responses (in partners, in groups, or as a class), anything doesn’t go!  The students need to provide accurate, well-organized, clearly justified responses.  Question and probe students or groups throughout to continually develop more sophisticated vocabulary and responses.   Model the elements that make a response more sophisticated: using appropriate vocabulary, supporting answers with evidence, citing multiple examples, etc.

·      If you want students to share with the class, do not feel as though you must call on a representative from every pair or group.  After calling on one or two pairs or groups, ask others to give a thumbs up if they had similar answers.

·      Listen to partner and small group discussions to observe responses the students are giving. This can provide valuable clues about how well students work together, how well they grasp the concepts, and what strategies they use to master concepts.  This is a valuable formative assessment, and will prove useful in planning for future learning.