Making the Transition To A Thinking Classroom

I'm entering the home stretch of the year I've spent Building A Thinking Classroom In Mathematics.  I've been documenting what I have learned and how it has gone since the very beginning in the hopes that those of you reading might have the chance to learn from my insights, successes, and failures experienced along the way.

Many of you reading this are likely entering the home stretch of your school year as well, likely with some hopes, dreams, ideas, and ambitions for how you'll either start or grow a Thinking Classroom next year.

In my experience, the last month or two of the school year are, hands down, the best time to start experimenting with goals or ideas you have for the following year.  The beginning of the year is so hard for starting new projects.  All the new school and district initiatives and all the extra work that come along with a new year can often derail our own, personal initiatives before they start.  So if I have a goal for next year, I start it in April the year before.

Starting in April has a lot of advantages when compared to starting in August.  In April, unlike in August I already know my kids backwards and forwards.  In April, unlike in August, my school and my district aren't pushing me to enact their new initiatives and goals.  In April, unlike in August, all of my procedures and routines are air tight.  In April, unlike in August, the kids are already pretty darn bored of whatever I've already been doing for the last six months.  In April, unlike in August, most of the soon-to-be-tested curriculum is behind us, lowering the stakes a bit if the change doesn't go so well.

In April, unlike in August, the time is ripe for getting a head start on my own new initiatives.

If transitioning to a Thinking Classroom next year is something you're considering, I'd love to encourage you to consider starting now.

And I'd like to help.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how to help others get started.  I tried to make the full leap all at once, and I wouldn't recommend that having done it.  If you look at my early posts from the year, the news wasn't too good. In time, I backed up quite a bit and started over.

​So the question begs - if I had it to do over again, how would I make the transition?  More importantly, for someone else looking to make the transition, how would I advise them to do so?

I have two ideas.

This has been the year I truly Built A Thinking Classroom, but I started experimenting last spring.

Idea #1 - Learn the Practices in Liljedahl's Order

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.

Hard to argue with the author, himself!

Ultimately, I ended up doing this retroactively.  When I was almost at my breaking point, I decided to go back to the first practice on that list that I wasn't going well, work on that, and shut down everything farther down the list.

One practice at a time, I built my way back to a better version of the Thinking Classroom I'd tried to launch in August.

It worked for me.

If you've read the book, it makes sense to you, and you feel confident that you can work through adding a new practice every week or two as you master the prior ones, it'll likely make your transition to a thinking classroom a smooth one.

BUT

This method does require your very first step to be a huge one - the tectonic shift from giving lessons to giving thinking tasks - right away.  From what I've seen, not everybody is willing or able to make that their very first step.  And if I had it to do over again, I don't think that's the first step I'd make again, either.  Well, not exactly, at least.  Instead, I'd make the transition by...
​

Idea #2 - Add A Thinking/Predicting Block Ahead of Direct INstruction

I see a lot of folks in the Building Thinking Classrooms community express discomfort with the idea of stopping direct instruction entirely.  Some don't trust that it will work (reasonable), others are worried that their administrators, students, or parents will make a fuss if they stop (also reasonable), and others still just need to see kids actually learn without direct instruction before they give it up (yup, reasonable).

Quitting direct instruction cold turkey might be too big a first step.  When I ask students to figure out how to do something new on their own in my Thinking Classroom every day, one of my mantras is that The Magic Is In the Mild, which is to say that I want to make the very first step a very small, easy one so that the kids can get started fearlessly and build some momentum.

Why shouldn't the same be true for a teacher trying to "figure out" how to Build A Thinking Classroom?

Figuring it out on their own - and far more engaged.

To make the first step in Building A Thinking Classroom a mild one, here's my idea.

​Let's suppose a typical math class is around an hour long and consists of two main parts:

• A teaching time, which consists of some sort of teacher-led knowledge transfer (gradual release, interactive note-taking, something like that)
• A practice time, which consists of students applying what they learned in some way (practice problems, math workshop activities, something like that)

In my prior, mimicking classroom my teaching-to-practice time split was about 40 minutes to 20 minutes (or 20 minutes to 40 minutes when I was using a flipped classroom).  Visually, that would make a typical class look something like this:

20-40 min	Teaching Time
20-40 min	Practice/Working Time

If I had it to do over again, the first baby step I'd take in Building A Thinking Classroom would be to do two things:

1. To place my students in visibly random groups every day 
2. to devote the first part of my teaching time to seeing if the kids could figure out what I planned to teach them through a "prediction time" thinking task.  

The "prediction time" could be as simple as introducing them like this: "we've already learned to ______________.  Today I want to extend that by teaching you how to ________________.  But before I do, I want you to take some time and see what you can figure out on your own, first.  Here are the type of problems we're going to do, organized from mild to spicy.  With your group, what can you figure out without me, first?"

And off they go to think.  

​After this time, you teach the rest of the lesson as you normally would.

10-20 min	"Prediction Time" (Thinking Task)
20-30 min	Teaching Time
10-20 min	Practice/Working Time

By easing in this way, you'll get to learn the following practices:​

• ​forming visibly random groups
• ​creating thin-sliced thinking tasks
• launching those tasks standing and clustered at the beginning of class using the"you can already...but what about..." format 
• possibly having students work standing at vertical surfaces (not essential - it's not all about the boards)
• fostering autonomy and mobilizing knowledge
• using hints and extensions to keep groups thinking

That's about half the practices, including most of what I've found to be the highest leverage ones!  During this time, I think you'll find that students get most of the benefit of a Thinking Classroom, but you get the peace of mind of knowing that if they don't "figure it out," you're still going to show them, give them traditional notes, etc.

I experimented with adding a "prediction time" the year before I Built A Thinking Classroom, and I found that:

• Students loved the opportunity to try to figure out the day's topic on their own
• Students very often did figure out the day's topic on their own
• A correct prediction is as good as an incorrect one for making learning "stick" once I teach it so the time is beneficial whether it works or not.

In addition to easing me into Building A Thinking Classroom, this change also improved my traditional classroom substantially!
​

If I made this transition now, I can easily see how, in time, my prediction/thinking tasks would get good enough that students were predictably able to "figure it out" just from those, and my planned teaching time would gradually turn into consolidation and note-making rather than direct instruction as I got more comfortable.

​Then the other practices could be built from there (one at a time).  
​

This group didn't even need consolidation today.

Why not give it a try?

Could the first step in Building A Thinking Classroom in Mathematics really be as simple as devoting a few minutes to saying "I'm going to teach you how to do this, but why not see if you can figure it out first"?

I think it really might just be.

If I were starting again, this is how I'd do it.  It would give me and the kids a chance to get a feel for it with low stakes.

Before long, I think I'd find several groups figuring out what to do without me.

And I could mobilize that knowledge.

And before you know it I'd be consolidating rather than teaching traditionally after the thinking time.

And my students would be making their own notes rather than taking mine.

And I'd get a feel for building tasks that make all of this even more likely.

And I'd be able to fill in the other practices as they made sense.

And before you know it, maybe, just maybe, my class would be full of thinking.

Happy Spring!

Making their own notes rather than taking mine.

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