Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics, Grades K-12

14 Teaching Practices for Enhancing Learning

A thinking student is an engaged student.

Sparked by observing teachers struggle to implement rich mathematics tasks to engage students in deep thinking, Peter Liljedahl has translated his 15 years of research into this practical guide on how to move toward a thinking classroom. Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics, Grades K-12 helps teachers implement 14 optimal practices for thinking that create an ideal setting for deep mathematics learning to occur. This guide

• Provides the what, why, and how of each practice
• Includes firsthand accounts of how these practices foster thinking
• Offers a plethora of macro moves, micro moves, and rich tasks to get started

©2020 Peter Liljedahl (P)2021 Corwin

Let’s Give It A Try

22 years of high school math instruction and much of this is new to me. Let’s see if I can improve thinking in my geometry classes. For the Greater Good!

Very useful book!

As an experienced educator I found this book an impressive consolidation of many areas of research. The authors have thought though so many issues and presented here a systematic path toward implementing practices that have long been understood to improve learning.
The narrator does a great job sounding as he were the author!

Amazing!

I am excited to begin my journey in building a thinking classroom during this coming school year!

Review: Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics by Peter Liljedahl

This book was chosen for a Math Department book study, and I’m really glad it was. I plan to start implementing the strategies right away—beginning with Toolkit #01 and working my way through Toolkit #04. There are so many practices in this book that make sense for helping students think rather than just follow procedures.

I first heard about BTC at CAMT over the summer, and seeing Peter Liljedahl’s collaboration with Math Therapy made me even more excited to dive into it. The approach aligns perfectly with the work I’m trying to do: helping students rebuild confidence, reduce math anxiety, and hopefully learn to love math again—or at the very least, heal a bit of their math trauma.

Overall, it’s a thoughtful and practical resource with ideas I’m genuinely looking forward to bringing into my classroom.

Students improved greatly

I’m a sped teacher - the ‘modifying building thinking classrooms for different settings’ was a necessary supplement. I think this method works for all kids. It works in the general Ed setting and pull out at my middle school