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.
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:
- I teach 6th grade 'standard' math.
- In lieu of participating in any sort of school-wide, separate CQI or intervention time, I have very long class periods where I do that kind of work with every class period separately. The first chunk of the video you'll see is review time, then I devote a fairly normal class period's worth of time to new content, BTC-style.
- The class you will see is fairly small (20-ish) because of...
- some of the standard reasons a class might be scheduled intentionally smaller
- poor attendance
- This is an extraordinarily typical class day. I didn't choose it for any reason other than that I thought to turn the camera on. This is how a day goes with this particular class.
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
- 0:00 - 23:45 - Kids are individually doing recall practice, then discussing them with a partner, then reviewing with me (CQI/intervention)
- 23:45 - 27:15 - Task Launch
- 27:15 - 49:45 - "Thin-Sliced" Curricular Thinking Task
- 49:15 - 1:07:55 - Consolidation
- 1:07:55 - end - Note-making and Check Your Understanding
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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