commit to user
21 students work together with their partner in completing the task. Small group
discussion and pair work are the main point of the study.
2. Principle of Cooperative Learning
Johnson and Johnson in Slavin 1995: 129 state five essential elements of cooperative learning:
a. Positive interdependence – students need to work together to complete the task.
b. Individual accountability – each student needs to develop a sense of responsibility towards completing the task and assisting other members.
c. Group and Individual reflection – it is necessary to reflect on the task and review goals.
d. Small group skills – teachers need to teach interpersonal skills so that the group functions efficiently.
e. Face to face interaction – physical proximity is required to enable ease of communication.
3. The Nature of Think Pair Share Method
Think Pair Share is a cooperative learning discussion. This simple but very useful method is developed by Frank Lyman of the University of Maryland.
Think-Pair-Share is a strategy designed to provide students with “food for thought” on a given topics enabling them to formulate individual ideas and share
these ideas with another student. It is a learning strategy developed to encourage
commit to user
22 student classroom participation. Rather than using a basic recitation method in
which a teacher poses a question and one student offers a response, Think-Pair- Share encourages a high degree of pupil response and can help keep students on
task Richards and Rodgers, 2001: 198. Slavin 1995: 132 describes Think Pair Share as follows: When the
teacher presents a lesson to the class, students sit in pairs within their teams. The teacher poses questions to the class. Students are instructed to think of an answer
on their own, then to pair with their partners to reach consensus on an answer. Finally, the teacher asks students to share their agreed-upon answers with the rest
of the class. Barkley, et al., 2005: 104 state, that in Think Pair Share, the instructor
develops and poses a question, gives students a few minutes to thinks about a response, and then asks students to share their ideas with a partner. Think Pair
Share is particularly effective as a warm-up for whole class discussion. The “Think component requires students to stop and reflect before speaking, thus
giving them an opportunity to collect and organize their thoughts. The “Pair” and “Share” components encourage learners to compare and contrast their
understandings with those of another, and to rehearse their response first in a low- risk situation before going public with the whole class. This opportunity to
practice comments first with a peer tends to improve the quality of student contributions and generally increases willingness and readiness to speak in larger
group.
commit to user
23 Santa 1996: 5 also explains TPS is a discussion strategy that can be used
as a pre-reading activity, problem-solving strategy, as a follow-up activity. Each student becomes an active participant. Furthermore, Johnson and Johnson 1987:
192 state that Think-Pair-Share is also robust in terms of reflecting the essential elements for cooperative learning and discussed earlier in this review. Peer
interaction promotes positive interdependence; the students learn from each other and have to share ideas to be able to report to the group. Each student is
accountable in this partnership. Interpersonal skills are highlighted in both the pair and group sharing components and face to face interaction is essential for the
successful operation of TPS. Based on the explanation above, it can be summarized that TPS is one of
method in cooperative learning. With Think Pair Share, students are given time to think through their own answers to the questions before the questions are
answered by others peers and the discussion moves on. Students also have opportunity to think aloud with another student about their responses before being
asked to share their ideas publicly. This method provides an opportunity for all students to share their thinking with at least one other student; this increases their
sense of involvement in classroom learning.
4. The Teacher’s Role in the Think-Pair-Share Method
