Building Thinking Classrooms

 

The Nuts and Bolts of Implementing “Thinking Classrooms” 

            In this Mind/Shift article, Kara Newhouse interviews Staci Durnin, a sixth-grade math teacher in Mineola, New York who read Peter Liljedahl’s book, Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics in the summer of 2023 and decided to try his approach after 29 years teaching with the conventional model. She loved the new approach and says that her students attained a much deeper understanding of mathematics than in previous years. Durnin reports that the transition involved a lot of work adapting lesson plans, but she got support from a 66,000-member Facebook group and it was all worth it. (Click the article link for an interview with Durnin and other teachers who implemented the approach during the 2023-24 school year.)

Newhouse’s article summarizes key elements of the “Thinking Classroom” approach. In 15 years of research, Liljedahl found that in the canonical I DO, YOU DO, WE DO math lesson, few students are thinking; rather, they’re mimicking the teacher. This is a problem, he says, because “if students are not thinking, they’re not learning.” Most of the so-called problem-solving in math classes, he believes, hasn’t been successful in getting students to think. “If we really want to have students learning through problem solving, then they have to get stuck, and they have to think, and they have to get unstuck.” 

Here’s how a Thinking Classroom lesson addresses this perennial problem of low intellectual engagement in math classes, often accompanied by I’m not a math person beliefs among many students:

-   The teacher gives a 3-5-minute introduction reviewing key background knowledge.

-   Students are randomly assigned to groups (two students per group in the primary grades, three in grade 3 and above).

-   Students see the random selection process in action, which makes them more likely to participate actively in their group and get to know all their classmates. 

-   All groups work on the same challenging problem standing up at erasable whiteboards.

-   Each group has one marker, and when a student has an idea, another student in the group writes it on the whiteboard.

-   The teacher circulates observing students’ progress, asking questions, providing vocabulary, giving hints and prods, and differentiating appropriately.

-   Students are encouraged to look at the strategies used by other groups, sometimes taking a “gallery walk” around the classroom.

-   The class convenes to consolidate key learnings, with the teacher drawing attention to successful solutions and common errors on the boards, providing more-direct instruction, and giving the bigger picture. 

-   Meaning-making during group work is messy, says Liljedahl, but it’s pulled together and made neater in this whole-group discussion.

-   Students write key insights in notebooks for their “future forgetful selves.”

-   Students then get up and, in different groups, move around the room solving shorter problems that check for understanding at the “mild,” “medium,” or “spicy” level of difficulty.

-   Each day’s problem gets a little harder, moving in “thin slices” through the curriculum. 

Liljedahl has found that most students need several lessons of less serious math problems to warm up to the new format before launching into the regular curriculum. “What that does,” he says, “is it makes math fun, and it makes math feel achievable and enjoyable. And it can be very disarming for students.” 

Collaboration within groups is a key success factor in Thinking Classrooms, he says: “What we noticed was that real collaboration doesn’t actually begin until students care as much about their partners’ learning as their own learning. And when empathy is unlocked, so many things work better in a classroom.” 

 

“How to Get Kids Thinking Instead of Mimicking in Math Class” by Kara Newhouse in Mind/Shift, August 27, 2024; see Memo 1013 for examples of Thinking Classroom problems at the elementary, middle-school, and high-school level, and Memo 992 for a summary of the first three chapters of Liljedahl’s book.

Difficult Conversations: 5 Things I Learned

 Difficult Conversation

Notes from Administrator Academy "Difficult Conversations" How to discuss Crucial issues to improve relationships and performance".  I have the handout filed under "Management/Difficult Conversations"

1. Difficult Conversation - and conflict management - takes up 40-90% of managers' time

2. There are common, known causes for conflict (see p. 4) unclear expectations, ineffective or poor communication, lack of clear jurisdiction or boundaries, interpersonal style or attitutdes (race, religion, ethics), conflicts of of interest, organizational change 

3. Functional View of Organizational Conflict. (Bacal) is that conflict is normal and can be productive.  Managers must work to manage conflict positively in order to employees to increase their knowledge and skills.

4.  

5. 

Useful resources.

p7. Goleman 5 components of emotional intelligence

p. 11 Committed listening checklist

Evidence-Based Reading and Writing

 In the ACT, skills related to reading and identifying the main idea primarily align with the Reading section of the test. Here are some specific skills assessed in the Reading section that are closely related to reading comprehension and identifying the main idea:

1. Main Idea and Central Theme Identification:

   • Students are tested on their ability to determine the main idea or central theme of a passage. Questions often ask about the primary purpose of the passage, the author's main point, or the central message conveyed by the text.

2. Understanding Supporting Details:

   • Students must comprehend how supporting details within a passage contribute to the main idea or central theme. This involves identifying specific evidence, examples, or arguments presented in the text that support or develop the main idea.

3. Recognizing Author's Perspective or Argument:

   • Students are expected to discern the author's perspective or argument and understand how it shapes the overall meaning of the passage. This includes recognizing the author's stance on an issue, the tone or attitude conveyed, and any implicit assumptions or biases.

4. Summarizing and Synthesizing Information:

   • Students are assessed on their ability to summarize key points or main ideas presented in a passage. Questions may require students to provide a concise summary of the passage's content or to identify the main idea of specific paragraphs or sections within the passage.

5. Identifying Central Claims in Arguments:

   • In passages that present arguments or viewpoints, students must identify the central claims or arguments made by the author. This involves understanding the structure of the argument, the evidence presented to support it, and any counterarguments or alternative perspectives mentioned.

Overall, success in the Reading section of the ACT relies heavily on students' ability to comprehend and analyze written passages, identify main ideas, discern supporting details, and understand the overall purpose and structure of the text. These skills are crucial for effective reading comprehension and are essential for performing well on the ACT exam.

Inspirational Things/ Thank you notes

 Ideas to write in thank you notes

Hey educators, If no one else tells you today, you need to know. You are showing up to the most important job there is & you are awesome at it. It's seen even though others might not say. It's known even though it's not acknowledged Your kids are better because of you.

Clarity on Race/SAT and the Texas model

 NYT - new clarity on SAT and race based admissions 

The Texas model

The situation has become clearer because the Supreme Court last week declined to hear a lawsuit against a public magnet school in Northern Virginia — Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, known as T.J.

Until recently, T.J. admitted students based on a mix of grades, test scores, student essays and teacher recommendations. This process led to a student body that looked very different from the area it served.

About 5 percent of T.J. students were Black or Hispanic, even though the surrounding area is about 37 percent Black or Hispanic. The school also enrolled few low-income students of every race, as Richard Kahlenberg of Georgetown University has noted. Only 2 percent of Asian students at T.J. came from low-income families, compared with 20 percent of Asian students in the surrounding area.

In 2021, though, T.J. switched to a new admissions policy. It was modeled after a bipartisan plan that Texas created in 1997, under Gov. George W. Bush. In T.J.’s version, the school filled most of its freshman class by accepting the top 1.5 percent of students at every public middle school in the area.

The underlying idea is simple enough. Many communities in the U.S. are economically and racially homogenous. But a policy that accepts the top students from every community can create diverse classes. The policy is defensible on meritocratic grounds because it rewards teenagers who excel in every environment — and on political grounds because it gives all communities access to desirable schools.

Once T.J. changed its policy, the school became much more diverse. The share of students from low-income families rose to 25 percent from 2 percent. Racial diversity also increased:

Source: Fairfax County Public Schools | By The New York Times

“I love T.J.,” Kaiwan Bilal, one of the students accepted under the new policy, told The Washington Post. “It’s even better than I expected, better than my parents told me it would be.” Bilal also said that he was struck by the school’s diversity.

Writers Toolbox Game

 Writer's Toolbox game for writing (similar to haikubes or paint chip poetry

)

Using Classroom Discussion as a Summative

 Interesting Edutopia article about discussion structures and prep.

One compelling sideline of the article:

I like to tease these questions throughout the unit. Since I’m a science teacher, my units are driven by phenomena, so I am always coming back to the driving phenomenon we are working to explain. 

My students answer a lesson question each day (which I use instead of a traditional objective or learning target), so the idea of having layers of questions makes sense to them. When we finally arrive at the end of the unit, students are ready to synthesize their learning about the questions we’ve been working to answer.