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One of the most common requests I see in the Building Thinking Classrooms community is some version of:
"I read the book and I love the idea, but I need to see it in action. Is anybody in my area doing this?"
If you live in - or ever visit - the Atlanta area, hit me up! You can come and observe any time! In the mean time, however, I wanted to provide something I haven't seen elsewhere - a full class recording on a typical day in my Thinking Classroom. I've seen lots of clips - almost always of kids at boards doing thinking tasks, but never a full class. So, if that would help you visualize it, here you go! A few details:
This first short video is not from the same day or from the same group of kids, but it shows how I assign the visibly random groups.
Here's the full class recording
If you'd like to see more or see a group recorded up-closed and mic-ed, you can see such recordings in this post on launching "hard-to-figure-out" tasks. Building A Thinking Classroom is hard - but incredibly valuable - work. Thanks for building yours, and I hope this video of mine helps! 
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7 Comments
Becky MABEE
8/7/2025 10:19:42 am
Could you share examples of your note making? It seems that you have pre-made templates
Doug
8/7/2025 07:19:45 pm
Hi Becky! I do make a template - it follows the advice in the "green" book for 'four quadrant' notes. A mild example with lots of scaffolding, a medium example with less scaffolding, and a spicy example with no scaffolding. The fourth quadrant' is for "things I want to remember". Not sure how sharing a link will go in this comment tool, but if it works, you can see an example on page 4 here:
Becky MABEE
8/7/2025 07:23:03 pm
Thank you! Is this something you print out and students just keep them in binders? Glue in notebooks? Note making is a big thought on my to accomplish list for this school year.
Becky MABEE
8/7/2025 10:20:26 am
Could you share examples of what your note-making templates look like?
Doug
8/7/2025 07:44:57 pm
It is, yes. Teach Like A Champion 3.0 has a technique called "standardize the format" that basically encompasses pre-printing student materials rather than having them write in notebooks. It is an efficiency technique - they have everything in the same place and in the same format, so there is no wasted time finding where to be. I have found it to be really helpful and have been using it for a few years. The document I linked has their recall practice for the day, some fluency practice, the note-making page, and the CYUs. There's never any doubt where anything is!
Becky MABEE
8/7/2025 09:48:49 pm
THANK YOU! I have a copy of Teach Like a Champion and have never read it, but now will be. FINAL question- you seem to have different expectations around what the student with the marker can do compared to Peter and you connect it to the Engagement Continuum? Do you have a blog post about this?
Doug
8/8/2025 08:30:15 pm
You're welcome! I do have a handful of practices that I started doing however I figured them out before I heard Peter's advice on them. The marker thing is one of them. I didn't know about that advice when I started, and I guess I figured out ways to get what that advice is meant to get in other ways. I have nothing against it, I just never tried it. I do manage accountability a lot, however. It's tough, but I'm always, always, ALWAYS harping on the kids that they're accountable to themselves and to the group for everyone to understand. It's hard at first for the passive kids, but gets better over time. I've never written specifically about it, but this post does show some examples of how I managed individual accountability within the group, if that's what you're looking for: http://www.dougdoblar.com/blog-topics/maintaining-accountability-and-checking-for-understanding-during-thinking-tasks-using-cold-calls-teach-like-a-champion-technique-34 Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
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About MeI'm an award-winning teacher in Atlanta with experience teaching at every level from elementary school to college. Categories
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