Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics, Grades K-12 by Peter Liljedahl

Author:Peter Liljedahl [Peter, Liljedahl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Published: 2021-08-02T04:29:23.569083+00:00

My research showed that this sequence of modes of engagement—doing, justifying, explaining, teaching, creating—not only increases challenge, but does so in a way that can continue to engage, or reengage, even the strongest group. It also explains why students often have a difficult time explaining their thinking—we are asking them to go straight from doing to explaining. We need to first ask them to justify their thinking.

The bottom line with all of this is that the goal of building thinking classrooms is not to find engaging tasks for students to think about. The goal of thinking classrooms is to build engaged students that are willing to think about any task. We achieve this through using thinking tasks (Chapter 1), visibly random groups (Chapter 2), and vertical non-permanent surfaces (Chapter 3); defronting the room (Chapter 4); answering only keep-thinking questions (Chapter 5); giving tasks verbally, early, with the students clustered around (Chapter 6); giving check-your-understanding questions (Chapter 7); and mobilizing the knowledge in the room (Chapter 8). Once we have this, we can point the thinking classroom at curriculum. Because curriculum tasks are not innately engaging for students, we need to manufacture engagement through giving clear goals, ensuring there is an ability to get immediate feedback on actions, and asynchronously maintaining the balance between the group’s ability and the challenge of the task at hand through the use of hints and extensions (see Figure 9.10). When we do this, not only do we make curriculum tasks more engaging, but we also create the possibility of covering a large amount of curriculum in a short amount of time.

Figure 9.10 Students in flow on curricular tasks.

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