Reflect after you have planned a task for your THINKING classroom:
Give it a try! Plan a lesson that includes some of the strategies you have learned in this book. What will you include that will provide your students with a rich math experience in your thinking classroom?
Consider the following questions:
- What strategies did you include?
- What are you anticipating?
- How might you need to spontaneously differentiate?
- HOW DID IT GO? 🤠
Respond and Interact
After planning and facilitating a lesson for your THINKING classroom, please post your response to one {or more} of the prompts above. Read our colleagues' reflections. Feel free to respond to someone by sharing a comment, insight or interesting possibility.
Thank you all for carving out the time for this book study. I know how busy life is and your commitment and enthusiasm to continue learning is inspiring. Feeling grateful! 🧡
ReplyDeleteComing back to school after having read this book over break was honestly exciting & such a treat to be coming in with new knowledge and ideas in mind for how I wanted to change things up. The first thing I did the morning I returned from break was rearrange my desks into groups of 3 to try and begin the defronting process. I loved the idea of groups of 3 based on the research in this book, and so far they have been working great! I'll definitely be keeping this arrangement for a while. I'm also thinking that when I change the seating arrangement next month, I'll make it a visually random assignment - using a randomizer that the kids can watch and then move their own desks to their new clump color location. We'll see how that goes - but so far, the visually random grouping has been the most successful, so might as well try it out with a seating chart as well! As far as defronting - I'm still working on that. I've found it a little difficult with our flat panel being the center of a lot of our lessons to be able to move away from the "front" being seen as anything but the front of the room. I'll definitely keep making adjustments though, step by step as I see how it can work. I do feel myself moving around and trying to teach from other places in the classroom more often now though, when the flat panel isn't being used - so that's the first step! :-) My goal after getting through report cards & conference week is to rearrange my classroom walls so I can find enough space to put up my Wipe Boards! I'm SO excited for those! And I can't wait to get working with them, there have already been several lessons that I've thought, dang, having those vertical writing surfaces up right now would be ideal! Finally, the main thing that I have been able to take away from this book and adjust my teaching practice has been the understanding of the different questions the students ask! I have been blown away by how many "proximity questions" are asked daily, and didn't even realize that's what was happening previously. I've given myself the OK to step back and let the kids work for the first few minutes of every work period so they can get started without immediately asking a question just because of their proximity to me. It' been a GAME CHANGER! Overall, this book is incredible, and I already know I'll be referring back to it (and one of my many tabs added, ha) regularly! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS!!
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