Emily and her second grade students finish reading "Corduroy," write or draw their final responses to the story, and share their responses with their partner.
Peers quickly write down a response to a focus question provided by the teacher, then read the brief response to a partner and follow it with a discussion of ideas.
-
What is it?
Write/Pair/Share is an oral language support strategy that allows students to formulate their thinking in writing before oral interaction with a peer. It increases student accountability for talk and supports the more hesitant speaker by providing written rehearsal.
-
How it works
After the teacher asks a question, students take a couple of minutes to jot down a response. Student can draw a picture or write a phrase or a couple of sentences. Students then turn to a preselected partner, read their quick writing or share their picture, and then discuss their thinking about the question.
Students can share with the rest of the group what they wrote or said, what their partner wrote or said, or the teacher can pass on the group share. The writing of thoughts lessens the need to share out from every interaction.
-
Why it works
When classroom participation structures are used, they foster oral language development with peer talk. The Write/Pair/Share participation structure gives students time to form their thoughts and the writing helps students access their thinking in a written rehearsal. This writing is a scaffold for the social speech structure. It also provides a degree of classroom management but the key goal is oral language development with peer-supported talk.
When this structure is used, almost all students have a opportunity to write and then a chance to share their thinking through writing in a low-risk setting. Verbalizing their written thinking scaffolds students understanding and provides talk at a peer level with the option to go back to the written support. By writing, students often use a more formal speech register that then moves into their social speech.
Sample of Write-Pair-Share in the classroom
In this short outtake, a teacher uses Write-Pair-Share to have students quickly write or draw an example from a book.
This short example is taken from a full Write-Pair-Share clip: “Quickly write down or draw what you’re thinking." The complete clip and more are in the scrolling video library below, or open the Write-Pair-Share sidebar in All Video Clips to the right.
Write-Pair-Share Video Library
-
-
Emily and her second grade students write down their connections to the book, she checks in with individual students, and then they share with their neighbor what they're thinking.
-
Viviana and four first grade students recall and write down the "rules for losing all your friends" from their readaloud.
-
Emily and her second grade students write down their responses on post-it notes, then share their responses with each other.
-
Emily and her second grade students prepare to write their responses to the book "Corduroy" using post-it notes.
Considerations for Use
Several classroom routines need to be set in place to facilitate the use of the Write/Pair/Share strategy:
- Decide on which children would pair effectively and assign partners. Students can come to the whole or small group experience with their preselected partner.
- Set up a signal for the timing of the quick written or drawn response. Have materials handy and easy to access.
- Rehearse how to read what has been written, especially if the written response is a drawing or brief fragment of language.
- Practice both sharing out and not sharing out after the partner discussion.
- Decide when the sharing out will support understanding and when the discussion in partners is sufficient.
- Be willing to change partners based on observations as well as normal events such as the absence of one member of a pair. Another reason to change partners would be that one partner writes much more quickly than his peer.
- Walk around the room or lean in to a pair, and look at what they are writing or drawing to see who understands the concept. Writing also keeps kids from having an attitude that they will just sit back and let their partner to all the thinking.
Things To Keep In Mind
This participation structure is reasonably easy to establish and use in the full range of settings in classroom instruction in all content areas. The Write/Pair/Share provides for a match between written/drawn language and social speech of peers to become part of the regular classroom procedures.
Observing during the times students are engaged in both the writing and the peer talk is an excellent opportunity to notice what was written, who is talking, how the pair is working, and quickly assess the learning about the content that is being discussed. The writing can be a form of accountability but be cautious not to push correct spelling and writing or writing might be discouraged.
Questions to Consider
