What is Thinking Classroom?
What do you know about Thinking Classroom? Have you found multiple sites with a variety of information? (Typical mass internet searching result).
Thinking Classroom is a classroom structure strategy focused on a flipped model with high student engagement, collaborative thinking, and autonomy. Immediately upon implementing the Thinking Classroom strategies I found that my classroom dynamic improved immensely! Not that we were all attacking one another and hating school life (haha) but I found that my students were more accepting of all their peers, they gained better communication skills, patience, and collaborative strategies.
Now, I’m not a paid advocate of Thinking Classroom and I don’t feel that I can legally share all the ins and outs of this teaching style but I’m going to give you the basics.
What is Essential?
1) A way to place students in random groups no larger than 3 people.
I use a deck of cards to place my students in random groups.
Other ideas include an online spinning wheel and numbering students
2) Vertical Non-permanent Surfaces (VNPS) and ONE dry erase marker.
Enough places around your room for each group to have a VNPS. This includes, but is not limited to whiteboards, whiteboard easels, windows, and sides of filing cabinets.
3) Low Floor Verbal Questions.
Breaking down your lesson to the basics is the best way to find a low-floor skill question to start your class. EX: if you’re wanting to focus your lesson on integers you may begin your class with a blank number line and use only positive numbers and slowly add integers onto the number line. This way, students can bridge their prior knowledge with the new knowledge. This helps students to not use their rote memory but to build on prior understanding and use inquiry and/or critical thinking to build their deeper understanding of the content.
4) Don’t Give "Stop-Thinking“ Answers.
If a group/student asks a stop-thinking question, smile and keep walking or pose another question to them. EX: Student asks, "Is this right?" The teacher responds, "What if … (and changes the question slightly to deepen the thinking)" OR "why don’t you go look at what group 2 is doing."