The math teachers in Ridgemont uses the Thinking Classroom model. This model is inspired by Peter Liljedahl's Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics. He has suggested 14 teaching practices for enhancing mathematical thinking and learning in classrooms. As this is the model I learned math methods course, I am excited to be part of this department to witness how the model is implemented in action.
Rather than diving right into curriculum math content, we spent the first several classes of the semester on non-curricular tasks. Maja and I let students know that our math class will be a Thinking Classroom. The routine for each class is that students will be divided randomly into groups of three. After a few minutes of instructions, they will work together at the whiteboards to solve the problem(s) given. The non-curricular tasks provides engaging contexts and propel students to think, rather than performing mathematical calculations and processes. These thinking tasks have easy entry points with evolving complexity, which allows everyone to participate and drives students to talk and collaborate. They are used to prime students for thinking and to persevere through the problem solving process. In the second week, we transitioned into curricular tasks. The first unit was measurement, and I thought this was a good transition. Measurement has many real world connections, so the thinking tasks we used were similar to the non-curricular tasks, which have some engaging contexts. Students could also visualize the mathematical concepts that we were teaching through the thinking tasks they were performing.
The Thinking Classroom model shifts away from the usual norms of classroom teaching to promote student thinking and for them to discover mathematical concepts themselves. At the initial stages of learning about the Thinking Classroom, it was hard for me to envision how to teach abstract topics, such as algebra and linear functions, without explicit teaching. Throughout the semester, I have seen the various thinking tasks used to teach different math topics, and under the guidance of Maja and other math teachers in the department, I gradually was able to lead and develop some tasks/questions for students to complete.
The practices of the Thinking Classroom go beyond fostering student mathematical thinking. They also build an environment for students to feel safe in taking risks in learning. The process of problem solving is one where failing is inevitable, and students will need to persevere and try again to get the solution. Through working in collaborative groups, students can support and learn from each other to succeed. The practice of randomized groupings also helps to remove social barriers, as students will be working with different students everyday. After a while, they become friends since they would have worked with everyone in the classroom multiple times. They gradually build their confidence in their abilities as they are willing to take more risks in trying around the people who support them. This is true in the grade 9 class that I was teaching. The students were comfortable working with each other. When anyone was stuck, another student would reach out to help. They even initiate projects to work together as a class and prepare treats to celebrate small occasions.
If I have an opportunity to implement the Thinking Classroom in the future, the aspect I would like to focus on would be allocating more time for consolidating knowledge and independent work after students have completed their group thinking tasks. During my time in the grade 9 classroom, I noticed that, although students were thinking during the tasks, many were not able to retend what they have learned. I believe that completing practice questions and homework are vital in learning math. As students are exposed to a variety of questions, they are also training their brains to problem solve for different situations. Unfortunately, I also understand that teaching a packed curriculum in a limited amount of time would make it difficult for teachers to allocate several classes on a specific concept for practicing and reteaching; hence, the responsibility of practice often falls on students to do outside of class time, which is quite hard for teachers to enforce. It would take some time or attempts to try to design a lesson that incorporate thinking tasks, consolidation and practice so that students can better remember and utilize what they have learned.
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