In addition to Think-Pair-Share partnering, here’s a list of ways to unpack student thinking:
- Take quick classroom surveys as a quick way to get ‘a feel’ for where the students are in their thinking about a topic.
- Ask students to share how they reached their individual conclusions. Accept a variety of methods and processes.
- Ask why questions.
- Extend wait time to more than 5 seconds to allow more students to actively think through their replies before answering.
- Encourage students to support and build onto each other’s ideas.
- Encourage students to freely question others to increase interaction and understanding how others think.
- Support students who have unique (maybe false methods) so their incorrect responses are NOT felt as failure, but as flawed attempts to make correct connections (After all failures or lack of having sufficient details to answer ‘correctly’ are the ways we learn to adjust or reevaluate our thinking processes.)
- Mistakes lead to growth. When they are seen as stepping stones to problem solving (and not “shot down”or declared wrong) they lead to asking more questions which leads to more learnings and understandings. Encourage students to talk about the ways they build new connections after their ideas miss the mark.