Reflect after you have planned a task for your thinking classroom:
Give it a try! Plan a lesson that includes some of the strategies you have learned in this book. What will you include that will provide your students with a rich math experience in your thinking classroom?
Consider the following questions:
- What strategies did you include?
- What are you anticipating?
- How might you need to spontaneously differentiate?
Respond and Interact
After planning a lesson for your classroom, please post your response to one {or more} of the prompts above. Read our colleagues' reflections. Feel free to respond to someone by sharing a comment, insight or interesting possibility.
posting this for Kelly Yvarra: Obviously there are a lot of components to a complete thinking classroom. Moving from a different grade level I am not as familiar to exactly what that will look like in my classroom quite yet. I am confident in using the practices to guide that work within my class. At the beginning of the year, the first few weeks would be where the groundwork needs to begin to build the autonomy in the classroom. Using those opening minutes with practices of random groups using non-permanent recording devices such as vertical white boards. I know in my teaching I will need to practice the keep thinking questions and challenging kids to get them to transition from mimicking math to thinking math problems and practice. Then using the t-chart method into rubrics so that students feel ownership in what the rubric looks like based on their won thoughts and ideas during math work. Managing the flow of students with hints and extensions will engage and help for the planning of consolidation. Within that unit allowing for meaningful notes by giving a template or graphic organized so that each student can write what they need. And these of simple rubrics with that continuum of their work within their groups and markings or check your understanding questions to show where they are and where they are going in their work and for formal grading purpose. I like that chapter 15 gives the toolkits to help develop the full thinking classroom for math. Realistically the lessons will most likely occur over multiple days in a math period until myself and the students have the sequence down, moving to 1 day lessons.
ReplyDeleteAs I think about my future lessons, there are three strategies that I want to immediately implement: vertical surfaces, random seating, and the new and improved rubric. There are a few things that I am anticipating though, one of my main concerns being the implementation in the classroom. When I practiced implementing the vertical surfaces philosophy amongst a classroom where it wasn’t the norm, the students were not as thrilled about it as I was. Something I recognized is that, unlike the classroom that I observed this strategy being used, the students hadn’t built up the stamina for the physical engagement. While I viewed it as an opportunity for them to be physically active, they viewed it as a time where they had to stand and couldn’t sit and relax. All this to say, if students aren’t used to the strategies that I am implementing there may be some pushback.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of spontaneously differentiating, I think it will be really hard for me to not just revert to tried-and-true practices, especially when it comes to classroom management. I’m sure there will be days when I will really regret the randomized seating and wish I had just created a chart, but it will be an opportunity for me to learn as well. I think I will really need to differentiate by thinking about how I can adapt these strategies to fit my teaching objectives and use them to effectively work with students.
What a good read for the summer. It opened my eyes to how to teach math differently. I’ve gained a lot of new knowledge and concepts regarding building math thinking classrooms. It isn’t that easy to implement all the 14 strategies in my MAP group, however I will start with: Give thinking tasks; Answer only keep thinking questions; and Mobilize knowledge. I am excited to gradually implement the strategies I’ve learned from this book next school year. This should impact my student’s math thinking and learning.
ReplyDeleteAlready I was thinking about trying to implement lots of different things... then I read chapter 15 and realized I may need to slow down a bit. Toolkit #1 seems a fantastic start to see how the children adapt to thinking tasks, visibly random groups, and vertical surfaces. I also want to de-front the classroom before trickling in the rest of Toolkit #2 before Christmas. Then I can start to think about the other toolkits. I am genuinely excited to see how the children respond to this different way of approaching lessons.
ReplyDeleteI think about how i can foster more autonomy within my students, and use the groups around them as a source of hints when they are stuck and not rush to help them out and rescue them.
ReplyDeleteThe title of this book made me laugh as I started to reflect on which strategies I'd like to include in math lessons this fall....Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics is meant to help us build thinking students, but right now it has ME thinking A LOT about how I can make small shifts to have big impacts on my students. Some of the strategies that I plan to include in math lessons this fall are randomized collaborative student groups, being intentional about which questions I answer and HOW I answer them, partnering with students to create simple rubrics for self-assessment, and assessing what is valuable to help students see the value in thinking critically, and persevering through problem-solving.
ReplyDeleteI anticipate that the implementation of these strategies will be bumpy at first, but with practice, I feel that both my kiddos and I will be better thinkers and that the classroom environment and engagement will be positively impacted.
DeleteChapter 15 helped me to feel ok with starting off smaller and building up to all 14 practices. I like that toolkit #1 seems manageable to start the year off with and am eager to jump into VNPS, random groups, and attempting to defront the classroom. I will likely start with non IL tasks, but my biggest challenge, as I look towards lessons from the curriculum, is how to mesh the Illustrative lessons with the thinking framework. Just looking over unit one, I worry that some of the lessons won't provide enough thinking or stretching for the students and I'll have to have some other tasks ready to keep them thinking. Also, I'm wondering how with a unit like volume, I can use VNPS.
ReplyDeleteBuilding a Thinking Classroom was an eye opener to change for my lessons that thinking is not only valued but necessary. I cannot implement all 14 practices but start out with a few and try to add more as both I and students feel comfortable. What is standing out for me to start with is to answer only thinking questions, tasks that get the students to think, help students see where they are and where they are going and continue to build.
ReplyDeleteThank you all for carving out the time for this book study. I know how busy life is and your commitment and enthusiasm to continue learning is inspiring. Feeling grateful! 🧡
ReplyDeleteI am excited to start the new school year with Toolkit #1. It will be nice to work on building the norms of a thinking classroom instead of trying to establish the norms mid-year. I am thinking about my classroom setup. I plan to "defront" the classroom and group seating in threes. This makes me think about how I might use the flat panel to best support my math time as well. I am also looking for a permanent way to set up enough VNPS around my room so that I do not have too much setup just for math class. Finally, I need to dig into IM unit one to see how to mesh this with these new practices.
ReplyDeleteI'm excited to share this book with the teacher I work with and am hoping she is receptive to implementing new concepts presented. I think this new style of teaching math will pair nicely with our new math curriculum, but too many changes at once will be a bit overwhelming. We will have to make sure we feel comfortable with IM and get it running smoothly before diving into the deep end with this, but Toolkit #1 shouldn't be that difficult to implement from the start.
ReplyDeleteSince I'm pushing in to K-3 math time in the fall, I'm not sure how much input I will have, but I look forward to hopefully seeing some of these toolkits in action. I am also hoping that my resource room teaching partner will take a look at the book since she has a big group of 4th graders who will be served in the resource room in a pull-out model. Finally, I hope to use some of the ideas in my reading and writing pull-out groups and am excited to see how I can adapt Liljedahl's research and ideas for those groups.
ReplyDeleteThis past spring, with the help of my instructional coach, I used some of these practices within my IM math lesson. We put up the VNPS and randomly grouped students into threesomes using the playing cards. We had them take their activity to the board and had them work through it together using the markers. We made the rule that the person with the pen could not talk and encouraged kids to rotate themselves writing/discussing. Overall, we had great engagement. We encouraged kids to look around when they were stuck- some felt like they were cheating if they did this. I tried to provide scaffolding and generic extensions to some groups that solved quickly. This was difficult to do on the fly and will take some practice. We had kids share out at the end. After reading this book, I would have had kids participate in a gallery walk and walk to the different boards. I would also ask kids to explain the strategies of other groups.
ReplyDeleteAfter finishing chapter 14, I felt quite overwhelmed with all the ideas presented in the book and pressure about figuring out where to start. I love, love, love that the authors broke it down the way they did in chapter 15. Starting with toolkit 1 is absolutely doable. As I set up my classroom this week, I will focus on de-fronting the room and creating spaces for vertical surfaces. I will also begin the year using randomized collaborative groups of 3. I look forward to trying the VNPs using the different colored markers and really like the idea of "consolidating from the bottom". I plan to use several of the thinking tasks provided in the book and find others from the websites suggested in chapter 6. This will be a fun adventure! Thanks, Renae, for sharing this valuable resource.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great read! As I think about starting the year and where I left off last year. I am thinking of how to defront my classroom and make it work for us all. I am excited to start the year with some different tasks and intentionally build my room around VNPs. I am hoping to get better at the answering questions that move thinking forward.
ReplyDelete