Building A Thinking Classroom - What If It Isn't Working?

As an active participant in the Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics Facebook Community, I frequently see posts that can be summarized as:

"I've transitioned to the Thinking Classrooms model, and it isn't working.  What do I do?

I usually don't respond to these posts because the answer is far too complicated to squeeze into a Facebook comment.  There are a lot of possibilities, and without stepping into that teacher's classroom to see what's going on, it can be hard to know what say.

Building A Thinking Classroom is indeed challenging.  I've been chronicling my learning and my progress since August, and three of my earliest posts were titled "Into the Weeds," "Disaster Strikes," and "Struggling To Hold On." It was hard at the beginning.  Frankly, it is still hard now.  It is routinely and predictably successful now, but it still isn't easy.

If it isn't working - and I mean full on, the whole thing feels like it isn't working - I can think of ten things to do about it. 
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1. Give It Time

I've been teaching for a while now, and Building Thinking Classrooms is my fifth total framework overhaul in how I teach math.  I started with the Learning-Focused Schools model out of college in 2003, moved to the Workshop Model in 2015, a Flipped Classroom model in 2017, went all-in on teaching online in 2020, and lauchned Building A Thinking Classroom in 2023.  I've also used three different frameworks for teaching science, as well as two for teaching literacy.

I started teaching myself the workshop model in 2015, and I was AWESOME at it... in 2017.

In short, I've gotten very good at learning to change frequently, and to change big.

One of the undeniable truths of major, framework-level change is that it takes time.  It takes time for the kids to get used to new models of learning, and it takes time for the teacher to work the kinks out and make it his or her own.

I don't even think about evaluating how a new teaching framework is going for six weeks. And that's six weeks of doing it all out, every single day.  Full immersion. That's a bare minimum acclimation period.  The workshop model took me over two years to finally get just right.

Looking back at my Building Thinking Classrooms posts from the year, the one where I turned the corner from frequent chaos to frequent success came right at seven weeks into the school year.  And that's coming from someone who is really comfortable with, experienced with, and frankly excited by major change.

Building Your Thinking Classroom not going too well?  You might just need to give it more time.
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2. Implement the Practices One At A Time

Toward the end of Building Thinking Classrooms In Mathematics, Liljedahl "chunks" the practices into sets, and suggests implementing the strategies strategically and sequentially according to those sets.

I cannot echo this suggestion strongly enough.  I started this school year confident that I was ready to implement the whole thing from day one.

I was wrong.

There was a point in September where I did a self-assessment of my progress, and consciously stopped doing the third group of practices all together until I got the second set under better control.

It was a major turning point in my year.  Once I shored up the group two practices - which didn't take long - I started adding the third set of practices one at a time.  First, I got flow-state maintenance under control.   Next, meaningful note-making.  Those took about a week each.  Then consolidation - that one took several weeks.

This decision was the turning point of my year.  Ever since backing off and then working on one practice at a time,things have been going really, really well.

And I shouldn't be surprised!  I've long advocated for assuringstudents are only focused on one thing at a time. Why shouldn't that apply to me, as well?

Building your Thinking Classroom not going so well?  You might consider backing off of some practices and working on them one at a time.
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3. Craft Tasks Carefully

In a Thinking Classroom, the boards and the collaboration get all the attention, but the quality of the thinking task is the real difference-maker.

I learned really quickly that I can't just give my students any task that relates to the topic we're learning.  Tasks have to be crafted very carefully - just the right entry point, just the right slicing, just the right content at just the right time in the unit... it's hard.

Frequently, I'll see folks in the Facebook community ask "Does anybody have a good task on _______?"  I'll be honest, I think this is a big mistake.  I have not had success using other teachers' tasks.  I have not had success with AI-written tasks.  I need a task every day that meets JUST the right standard in JUST the right way for JUST the right students at JUST the right sequence in the broader unit of study.  Picking a task off list or asking AI to make one isn't likely to meet that level of nuance very often.

I'll give you a disasterous example from literally yesterday.  I'm working with my students on finding the area of parallelograms.  My specific state standards call for students to find the area of those figures by "decomposing them into rectangles and triangles."  Even making my own thinking task, look how easy it was to cause a mess.  Just about any parallelogram example from Google looks like this:

As you can probably see, you wouldn't be able to find the area of this parallelogram by decomposing it into triangles and rectangles (at least not as a 6th grader), because after decomposing it as such, you wouldn't know the length of the base of the triangles.

When it comes to thinking tasks, details like that matter... a lot.

I've written two big posts about what I've learned about thinking tasks - one is about crafting thin-sliced tasks specifically, and the other is a more general piece about when and how I use the different types of thinking tasks.  I hope they're helpful if you need some guidance on this practice.  I'll warn you, though, they come with an unfortunate truth I've learned - if I want the task to work, I have to write it my d*#$ self.

Building your Thinking Classroom not going so well?  It may be time to stop using tasks written for different students in different states learning different standards at different points in different units of study.  It may be time to craft tasks more carefully.
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It may not look like much, but that thinking task had to be crafted JUST right, and I couldn't find one that met every little detail I wanted - one step equations, no negative numbers, just the right conventions and notation in the equations, multiple representations of multiplication and division, and so on.

4. Launch Tasks Strategically

Much of the Thinking Classrooms philosophy rests on the premise that, with the right task, the right sequencing, and the right thin-slicing, students can "figure out" the lion share of mathematics with just a series of hints and extensions from the teacher.  As I said above, the task has to be just right for this to happen, which I have found to be true, but not sufficient.

The task launch has to be just right, too, in order to get kids' foot in the door, so to speak.

Most days, I can just get by with a"you can already... but what about...?" task launch.  But some topics are harder to "figure out" than others.  I've had to experiment with a couple of other task launch strategies as well, likedoing minimal instruction to get their foot in the door and showing completed examples to get the ball rolling on hard-to-figure-out skills.

One of my big Thinking Classrooms mantras is that "the magic is in the mild."  If the mild questions are accessible enough for them to get started, the complexity can increase rapidly through collaboration, hints, and extensions.  Carefully considering the task launch can go a long way toward making that happen.

Building your Thinking Classroom not going so well?  Consider launching tasks specifically and carefully.
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5. Transfer Ownership

Transferring ownership of learning is relatively straight forward in a traditional, mimicking classroom.  Most commonly, through some sort of gradual release series, ownership of content knowledge is passed from the teacher directly to individual students.  If done well, that gradual release method is pretty reliable, and students are able to begin mimicking the new skill in a few minutes.

In a thinking classroom, the transfer of ownership is not so tidy.

Students develop their own understanding of a new skill or concept in their thinking groups first.  This understanding is usually messy, imprecise, and often depends on the collective knowledge of the group.  After a thinking task, students usually have some level of understanding and mastery, but a) it isn't equal among all students, b) it may only exist in the group, at the board, and all together, and c) different groups will have formed different understandings and strategies.

Messy.

The process of transferring that messy, collective understanding to a neat and tidy individual one can be tricky, but it is of vital importance that we make the effort to do so.  Seeing students "at the boards" gets all the attention, but the work that happens afterwards is what seals the learning and transfers ownership of it to individual students.

In some way shape or form, that process includes consolidation, meaningful note-making, check-your-understanding questions, and spiral reviewing.  Consolidation is a challenge for everyone.  I am constantly experimenting with new consolidation practices, sequences, and activities.  Right now, I've developed a menu of consolidation activities that seem to work.  In general, I find that making the effort to do it at all is more important than doing it perfectly. Note-making, check your understanding questions, and spiral reviewing are more straight-forward.

Again, perfect needn't be the enemy of good here.  Students just need some chance to transfer ownership of learning from a messy, group understanding to a neater, individual understanding.  

Building A Thinking Classroom not going so well?  Assure that students are getting a proper opportunity to own what they figure out.
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I've been experimenting with formative writing to kick off the consolidation process.

6. Manage Memory

One of the practices I will credit a lot of my Thinking Classroom success to is managing students' memory.  We spiral review a lot.  I expect kids to forget what they learn.  I expect kids to have messy understandings of what they learn that need "cleaning up" over the next few days.  It's normal.  Part of the ownership process I discussed in #5 is being reminded tomorrow, and next week, and next month that what we learned in the past is still important and that you're still accountable for it.  

Much of what I know about memory management I learned from Teach Like a Champion.  Their techniques ofretrieval practice and "stretch it" are both daily parts of my build-up to the thinking task, and they've been invaluable for my students' long-term retention of what they learn.  

​Building a Thinking Classroom not going so well?  Maybe the kids are just... forgetting?
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Remembering is hard.  For everybody.  It has to be trained.

7. Manage Behavior

Building a Thinking Classroom in Mathematics brings with it so many incredible changes.  The room looks different, work looks different, notes look different, teaching looks different, the kids are standing up, everybody is talking all the time - there are days I stop, look around, and hardly recognize what is happening as even counting as "school."

Unfortunately, there's a big something that isn't different - there is still behavior to manage.  A tight classroom and behavior management system is still a must.  There's no getting around it.

I've already written a piece about my thoughts on influencing student behavior.   It isn't specific to a Thinking Classroom, but it still has my broad beliefs about how and why to do that effectively.
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Classroom and behavior management has gotten much harder since the pandemic.  I reached my own breaking point in 2021 when I had to stop and admit to myself that I needed a crash course on how to do it.  Discipline was derailing everything I was trying to do and was making my students (and me) miserable.  I had to hit the books and teach myself how to do it all over again.  Peter Liljedahl is my North Star for thinking and math, Michael Linsin and Teach Like A Champion are my North Stars for all things classroom, behavior, and instructional management.  If you could use a North Star or a crash course refresher for the new era of classroom management we've entered, I highly recommend both.

Building A Thinking Classroom not going so well?  It might be time for a classroom and behavior management reboot.
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When you find out your teacher still enforces rules and consequences in a Thinking Classroom

8. Manage Attention

Like behavior, managing attention post-pandemic  is also much harder than it used to be.  Building a Thinking Classroom does a lot of the legwork on attention management, but I still find myself doing a good bit of additional work on this on my own. 

During a task launch, I am laser focused on every student and their attention.

In thinking groups, the kids need regular reminders of what their job is when they have the marker and when they don't.

​During consolidation, I'm making constant efforts to keep kids' attention where I need it.

During note-making, I'm still hard at work making sure groups are on task.

Making sure any extra class time is used for check-your-understanding questions - and those alone - is a daily battle with a handful of students.

But it has to be done.  Kids only learn what they pay attention to.  Building a Thinking Classroom helps, but it isn't a silver bullet.

Building Your Thinking Classroom not going so well?  Maybe students aren't paying enough attention. ​

I stay keenly attuned to subtle signals that I may not, in fact, have their undivided attention.
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9. Communicate the Reason Behind the Practices

We are asking students to make a pretty big leap when they enter a Thinking Classroom.  There are a whole host of things we ask them to do that aren't asked of them in any other class, and some of them are likely literally forbidden in other classes.

Standing up is my favorite example.  When I show other teachers video of my task launches, they usually can't even pay attention to what is happening because the sight of a group of kids standing clustered in the middle of the room stresses them out so much.  "I never let the kids stand up," I usually hear.  I get it!  I had the same policy myself at one point (meanwhile, I've actually stared doing other parts of class standing and clustered because I like it so much!).

Standing is also a point of contention with quite a few of my kids.  They complain about "just sitting there" in their other classes, then complain to me about having to stand up so much.

Explaining to kids why we stand, how thinking is different than remembering, why I give them answers to the check-your-understanding questions, why we have to obsess about vocabulary,   and so on, have all gone a long way for me.  Knowing that there is some sort of reason behind every little decision does seem to give most of them some comfort that I know something they don't - like there is a secret code behind it all.  Even if they don't agree, understanding goes a long way.

Building your Thinking Classroom not going so well?  Maybe your students just need some help understanding it.
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"Upon careful examination, it would appear that you do, in fact, have a good reason for asking me to do these fourteen strange and perplexing classroom practices."

10. Make sure it is all​ about thinking

My biggest fear since becoming a member of the Building Thinking Classrooms Facebook community is that there are droves of teachers out there Building an At-The-Boards Classroom rather than a Thinking Classroom.

The boards look like they're the star.

Like they're the thing.

But they're not.

Thinking is the star.

​I see posts like "we went to the boards today" or "they're at the boards but still not learning" or "how often do your kids go to the boards" every week.  I get it.  The boards are eye-catching.  Seeing and hearing at the boards will make an administrator think they've died and gone to math heaven (one of my assistant principals actually calls my Thinking Classroom "math heaven").  

As Liljedahl always says, "thinking is what you do when you don't know what to do."  A Thinking Classroom is supposed to be a room where, most of the time, kids are figuring out what to do because they don't know what to do.

The boards are one of fourteen practices meant to generate thinking.  They're not the star.  They're a supporting role.

There should be thinking before the boards.  There should be thinking after the boards.  

We are Building Thinking Classrooms.

Building your Thinking Classroom not going so well?  Maybe your show has the wrong star.
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Boards or no boards, it's about thinking.
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What did I miss?

It is my sincere hope that every teacher out there who wants to could experience the same success I have Building A Thinking Classroom.  It is tough when I log into the community and see someone struggling, but I don't know how to help because I'm not there to see what's going wrong.  This opus is my attempt to make suggestions based on what I've seen and experienced myself, but what about you?  What are some other things a teacher struggling to Build A Thinking Classroom might need to consider? 

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Want to read more right now?  You're in luck - this is my 81st post! You can browse past posts by category:

• ​Building A Thinking Classroom
• Leaning Into The Science and Engineering Practices
• Classroom Practices
• Classroom Stories
• Ideas and Opinions
• Pandemic-Related Issues​​