BUILDING THINKING CLASSROOMS
Author: Peter Liljedahl
"There was lots of activity—the
students were busy from the
beginning of class to the end.
They were taking notes,
answering questions, filling in
worksheets, and starting on their
homework. They were busy.
They just weren’t thinking."
(Liljedahl, 2020, 4)
Step 2: VNPSs
Once students have been sorted into groups,
where do they work? The answer is standing up,
stationed around various places in the room, with
vertical non-permanent surfaces. Liljedahl states
that having the writing surfaces, such as a
whiteboard as pictured below, being non-
permanent promotes risk-taking.
In my teaching, only 1 marker is
allowed per group. I have
found this deters doodling and
disengagement. In addition, the
person writing must be writing
down the ideas of their peers,
not their own. If the writer has
an idea, they must pass the
marker off to another group
member and communicate
their ideas. I find this promotes
understanding with all parties.
Step 4: Consolidate
One the common set of tasks have been
completed by all the thinking groups, we will
gather around the board as a class and pull
together the pieces of what students learned in
their groups in order to come up with a class
definition, fact, or formula. This new knowledge
was entirely driven by the students, and is thus
more comprehensible and more meaningful
seeing as they were active participants in its
creation.
Calling all teachers!
It's time to rethink the outline of our
mathematics lessons and reengage our
students with the help of Liljedahl's 14 tips
for facilitating meaningful learning.
Otherwise, we risk continuing down this
path...
Step 1: Create Thinking Groups
In tip #2, Liljedahl stresses that groups should be
visibly randomized. I have found websites that will
create groups at random, or you can pass out
numbers. Either way, this method has proven
effective given that 100% of students enter them
with the mindset of thinking and contributing,
compared to the mere 20% who have those same
thoughts in strategic or student-chosen groups.
Step 3: Circle,
Ask, and Assess
Rather than feeding kids the formulas and the answers, and
then having them repeat what you did in workbooks, let
them try and come up with an answer first! Give all students
the same prompting question relating to the strand at hand.
One I have used in the past is "if I double the length of a
square would the perimeter also double?". When groups
have an answer and proof, give them a follow up task, such
as "oops sorry not a square, I meant a rectangle". I usually
have a few backup tasks that get increasingly trickier on
hand for early finishers.
All the while, I am making my way around the classroom
with a red marker, and circling things on the board and
saying thing like "this is really good thinking, don't erase
that". I am also able to assess as learning in a way that
Liljedahl claims informs both the teaching and the learning.
References
Liljedahl, P. (2020). Building Thinking Classrooms in
Mathematics, Grades K-12: 14 Teaching Practices for
Enhancing Learning (1st ed.). Corwin.