Book Review: Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics: Teaching Practices for Enhancing Learning

Title: Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics: Teaching Practices for Enhancing Learning

Author: Peter Liljedahl

Picture of Book: 

Brief Description: 

“Building a thinking classroom” is about breaking away from institutional norms and finding new practices that will not only exhibit occasional thinking in students but will sustain consistent, ongoing student engagement and thinking. Much of how classrooms look and much of what happens in them today is guided by norms that have not changed since the inception of an industrial-age model of public education. In an effort to find a list of variables that impact thinking in a classroom, Liljedahl spent several months visiting classrooms looking for a way to disaggregate teaching into discrete factors, each of which could act as a variable in the pursuit to improve thinking in the classroom. In the end, a list of 14 such factors emerged including: 

1. What types of tasks we use
2. How we form collaborative groups
3. Where students work
4. How we arrange the furniture
5. How we answer questions
6. When, where, and how tasks are given
7. What homework looks like
8. How we foster student autonomy
9. How we use hints & extensions
10. How we consolidate a lesson
11. How students take notes 
12. How we choose to evaluate
13. How we use formative assessment 
14. How we grade

Most important aspects/brief quotes: 

•  The Building Thinking Classrooms Framework for implementing the 14 thinking classroom practices
•  After observing a traditional mathematics classroom environment, Liljedahl realized that “at no point...had I seen...students do any thinking - at least not the kind of thinking that we know students need to do to continue to be successful in mathematics in future grades.”
•  Furthermore, the teacher was “planning her teaching on the assumption that students either couldn't or wouldn’t think.”
•  These challenges lead to research that resulted in these “optimal practices for thinking” in the classroom:
•  14 Thinking Classroom Practices: 
1. Give Thinking Tasks
2. Frequently form visibly random groups
3. Use vertical non-permanent surfaces
4. Defront the classroom
5. Answer only keep thinking questions
6. Give thinking tasks early, standing, and verbally
7. Give check-your-understanding questions
8. Mobilize knowledge
9. Asynchronously use hints and extensions to maintain flow
10. Consolidate from the bottom
11. Have students write meaningful notes
12. Evaluate what you value
13. Help students see where they are and where they are going
14. Grade based on data (not points)