Consolidation After Thin-Slicing - What Did We Learn During That Thinking Task?

In my gradual journey toward a Thinking Mathematics Classroom this year, one of the most rewarding aspects has been that thinking begets more thinking.  

• At first, our primary means of learning changed from passive mimicking to active thinking.
• Later, we were able to transition notes practice from one of passive note-taking to active note-making.
• Eventually, were then able to transition our homework/practice time from one of mindless, passive compliance to one of active, mindful checking-for-understanding.

With each successive element of class transitioning from passive receiving to active thinking, it becomes more and more painfully evident when there is an element of class that does not involve thinking.  The entire energy in the room is different.  I have almost no ability to hold the kids' attention anymore when we transition into something passive. They turn completely off when a portion of class is not a thinking experience.

The kids no longer seem to consider me to be a source from which learning might come.

"Oh, he's talking now.  This clearly isn't important.  If it were, WE would be talking."

As I've referenced before, one of the class activities where I've yet to completely transition to the Building Thinking Classrooms practice is consolidation.  It's an intimidating one, and I've heard several interviews with Peter Liljedahl where he says that it is the practice he gets the most questions about.  There are definitely days where I do my best with this part of the class, but it becomes very clear that we've entered not-thinking territory and the kids are tuned out, waiting to reboot their thinking when note-making begins.

One of the ways I routinely stop the thinking is when I start the consolidation process by referring to our unit success criteria after the thinking task.  Keeping these front-and-center is a priority for me and for my school, so I make an effort to point out which success criteria were addressed in the recently completed task so that the kids can see where they fit into the broader unit.  It's fine, but the kids are generally tuned out, mindlessly checking off whatever I tell them to.

On Thursday, I flipped the script - I asked them to tell me which success criteria they had addressed in their thinking task. 

And voila - more thinking.

​And thinking during consolidation!

​I combined this new twist on analyzing the success criteria with recent advice I heard from Liljedahl regarding consolidation after a 'thin-slicing' thinking task - to put new examples on the board and to ask the kids to decide which is mild, which is medium, and which is spicy so that they begin to analyze the differences and nuances in different situations.
​

I've done several "which example is mild, medium, and spicy" consolidations with good results after hearing Liljedahl explain this new idea on a podcast

Far and away - my best consolidation yet.

If you'd care to see, I've included some (not great) video of the consolidation below. 

• Here is the thinking task they had worked on prior --> THINKING TASK
• Here are the success criteria they're looking at --> SUCCESS CRITERIA 
• Here are the three examples I put up afterward for them to analyze

• And here are the videos

At least for me, this is orders of magnitude more thinking than I typically get during a consolidation, so it is a big step forward!  I do a lot of thin-slice thinking tasks, and I see a lot of potential for this to become a reliable consolidation formula:

• What success criteria did we address?
• What's your evidence that we did so?
• Follow Liljedahl's advice on using "which examples go where?" to complete it

As he says in the podcast I referenced above, thin-slice thinking tasks often need a different flavor of consolidation than problem-solving tasks, and I think this just might work!

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