Hi, welcome to the site. Have you checked with your tutor if they have any materials for you to research this?
Sustained shared thinking is a concept where it's been observed children who share their ideas and views in pairs or groups have a greater/sustained interest in what they're doing and so learning about.
To find out more the EPPE study explains sustained shared thinking on page of this brief:
http://eppe.ioe.ac.uk/eppe/eppepdfs/eppe_brief2503.pdf
Quote:
The quality of adult-child verbal interactions
‘Sustained shared thinking’ is where two or more individuals 'work together’ in an intellectual way to solve a problem, clarify a concept, evaluate an activity, extend a narrative etc. Both parties must contribute to the thinking and it must develop and extend the understanding. It was found that the most effective settings encourage ‘sustained shared thinking’ which was most likely to occur when children were interacting 1:1 with an adult or with a single peer partner. It would appear that periods of ‘sustained shared thinking’ are a necessary pre-requisite for the most effective early years practice.
You'll also find information about this in the publication by
DI Chilvers: Playing to learn (click the download button)
Page 231/246/287 of this EYE level 3 handbook on amazon (if that's the course you're doing?)
The Project Approach is one way that sustained shared thinking is being used to support children - free sample pages from
The Project Approach by Marianne Sargent and
purchase the book on amazon.co.uk
and these threads:
https://www.silkysteps.com/forum/showthread.php?p=62672
http://www.silkysteps.com/forum/showthread.php?t=17013
Hope this helps xx