Think–Pair–Share gives students time to form an answer, discuss it with a partner, and contribute to a wider conversation. Digital tools can help capture those ideas, make revisions visible, and bring more responses into the class discussion.
The important part is preserving the purpose of each stage. If students see everyone’s answers immediately, independent thinking can turn into following the first response. If partners spend their discussion time formatting slides, the technology can distract from the reasoning.
Below are six digital tools for Think–Pair–Share, with practical suggestions for using each during the think, pair, and share stages. These are suggested classroom workflows, not claims that the tools automatically improve learning.
Digital Tools for Think–Pair–Share at a Glance
| Tool | Think | Pair | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Padlet | Draft independently; delay public posting with manual approval. | Compare drafts and write a joint post. | Discuss posts and add questions through comments. |
| Mentimeter | Submit an individual response with results hidden. | Discuss reasoning, then answer a second question. | Reveal results and explore explanations or changes. |
| Google Slides | Write privately on paper or in a separate document. | Combine ideas on an assigned pair slide. | Present slides or conduct a gallery walk. |
| FigJam | Sketch or write privately before adding ideas to the board. | Arrange sticky notes, connect ideas, and build an explanation. | Discuss board sections and compare approaches. |
| Nearpod | Answer an Open-Ended Question or Draw It activity. | Discuss responses and complete a follow-up task. | Use Collaborate Board or teacher-selected responses. |
| Pear Deck | Respond individually to an interactive slide. | Compare reasoning and answer a second prompt. | Display responses and discuss contrasting approaches. |
Feature availability, participation limits, and access arrangements vary by account and subscription. Check what is available through your school before planning the activity.
1. Padlet
Padlet provides a shared board for collecting student contributions. Sections can organise posts, while comments allow classmates to respond. Manual moderation lets the teacher approve posts before they become visible to others.
Think: Give students a question and a short period to draft an answer independently. They can write on paper or submit to a board with manual approval enabled. Keep posts unpublished until the independent stage ends.
Pair: Partners read their drafts to one another, identify an agreement or disagreement, and compose a joint post. Ask them to include a reason or evidence so the post records more than their conclusion.
Share: Approve the pair posts and discuss selected examples. Enable comments for follow-up questions such as “Which detail supports your interpretation?” Sections can organise responses around claims, evidence, or unresolved questions.
Classroom example: After reading a story, pairs post an interpretation of a character’s decision and one supporting quotation.
Padlet is particularly useful when you want a collection of responses that students can revisit after the discussion.
2. Mentimeter
Mentimeter supports polls, word clouds, and open-ended responses. Teachers can hide results while students answer and reveal them when ready.
Think: Ask students to answer a poll or explain an initial position through an open-ended question. Hide results so the displayed responses do not influence their first answer.
Pair: Pause the presentation for partner discussion. Ask students to explain their reasons and consider their partner’s evidence. Then use a second question to collect a revised answer or a joint response. Make clear whether each student or each pair should submit.
Share: Reveal the results and invite students to explain what changed or why they maintained their position. A word cloud can collect short associations, but an open-ended response is more useful when you need to see reasoning.
Classroom example: Students choose which explanation best accounts for a science observation, discuss their evidence, and answer again.
Mentimeter collects the responses; the teacher organises the partner conversation.
3. Google Slides
Google Slides works well when pairs need space to combine text, images, diagrams, or worked examples. Shared editing and comments support a class presentation in which each pair contributes a slide.
Think: Display the prompt and ask students to write independently on paper or in a separate document. A shared deck is visible to its collaborators, so an assigned slide should not be treated as a private thinking space.
Pair: Give each pair a numbered slide with a simple structure: initial ideas, joint explanation, and supporting evidence. Partners discuss their answers before completing the slide. Add an “unresolved question” field if agreement is unnecessary.
Share: Present selected slides or let students browse the deck as a gallery walk. Use comments for questions and feedback. Agree on editing expectations so students work on their assigned slides.
Classroom example: Pairs compare two solutions to a mathematics problem and explain whether both methods are valid.
A prepared slide template keeps the activity focused and reduces time spent on design.
4. FigJam
FigJam is a collaborative whiteboard with sticky notes, drawing tools, connectors, and facilitation features such as a timer and voting.
Think: Students first write or sketch independently, then add their ideas to the board when prompted. For a simple setup, keep the independent draft on paper. Different areas of a shared board are not automatically private.
Pair: Assign each pair a labelled section. Partners arrange their notes, group related ideas, connect claims to evidence, or draw a shared model. Ask them to explain their choices as they work.
Share: Visit selected sections together and compare how pairs organised their thinking. Voting can identify an idea to discuss further, but popularity should not determine whether an explanation is accurate.
Classroom example: Pairs build a cause-and-effect map explaining changes in a local habitat, then discuss differences between their maps.
FigJam is a useful choice when students need to show relationships between ideas, rather than submit a written answer alone.
5. Nearpod
Nearpod combines lesson content with activities including Open-Ended Questions, Draw It, polls, and Collaborate Board. Teachers can review responses and share selected work with the class.
Think: Begin with an individual Open-Ended Question or Draw It task. Students might explain an inference, annotate an image, or show their first approach to a problem.
Pair: Pause for partner discussion. Give partners a specific instruction: compare evidence, identify a difference, or explain a step. Follow with another response task so students record what they learned from the discussion.
Share: Use Collaborate Board to collect pair summaries, or display selected responses for discussion. Keep the distinction between individual and pair submissions clear.
Classroom example: Students interpret a historical image independently, compare observations with a partner, and submit a revised interpretation.
Collaborate Board supports shared contributions; it is not a jointly editable pair document like a Google Slide.
6. Pear Deck
Pear Deck adds interactive questions to presentations. Students submit responses, and teachers can display them through the Projector View. Response types and access to the private Teacher Dashboard depend on the plan.
Think: Use a text-response slide for an initial explanation. Where available, a drawing response can capture an annotated image or worked solution. Keep responses off the projected display until students finish.
Pair: Ask students to explain their responses to a partner, then introduce a second interactive slide: “What would you revise after your discussion, and why?” Keeping the initial and follow-up responses separate makes the change easier to examine.
Share: Display responses and compare approaches. With the relevant Dashboard access, teachers can review named responses privately and highlight examples for class discussion. Projector responses are anonymous by default.
Classroom example: Students explain an author’s purpose, discuss supporting details, and submit a revised explanation.
Pear Deck captures thinking around the discussion; it does not provide a shared canvas for partners to edit together.
Choosing a Tool for Your Lesson
Choose Padlet when you want a board of pair contributions. Use Google Slides for a more developed pair product, or FigJam when arranging and connecting ideas is central to the task.
Mentimeter suits quick responses before and after discussion. Nearpod and Pear Deck are useful when Think–Pair–Share sits within a teacher-guided lesson.
You can also keep part of the activity offline. Students might think on paper, discuss face to face, and use one device per pair to share. A useful final prompt is: “What did your partner help you notice?” That gives the discussion a purpose beyond producing another digital response.
