Building Thinking Classrooms

Definition: A building thinking classroom helps change the way students are learning. Students are encouraged to learn and explore new techniques while being guided by a teacher. Students learn vertically on a whiteboard where they can erase problems and learn by proving definitions. This is mostly done in group work while changing groups frequently to work with different perspectives. The biggest kicker of this type of classroom is NO NOTES; there are barely any notes for students to take because they learn by doing or struggling through questions. 

Pros: This approach to learning math presents a lot of positive areas of growth for students. For one, it encourages students to problem-solve and critically think as they work through unfamiliar problems with little initial direction. It also gives students many opportunities to collaborate with classmates, and not just their friends. Switching up the learning groups allows students to see and share different methods for solving a problem and helps them create a network of classmates who they can work alongside. This method is also very hands on. It gives the classroom to the students and allows them to directly do the work to learn the material. Finally, students get to work through questions at their own pace and ask questions as they arise.  

Cons: The biggest con of having a building-thinking classroom is no notes for the students to look back on and study. Studying for exams is a big adaptation concerning what a student needs to do and how they must be diligent and proactive to take some notes or pictures in class to study with in the future. Another downside of building thinking classrooms is how to best give exams or tests to students. Since they are not learning on pencil and paper, how do we as teachers adapt that to taking an exam on paper? This is especially challenging since they are learning and working in a group to collaborate with peers on what the best process would be; do you always do group exams? Is it possible to give an exam verbally or on a whiteboard?  

Would you use it? As a future teacher, it is important to consider different teaching methods like building thinking classrooms and whether you would use them in your classroom. There is a lot of value in trying nontraditional teaching methods and seeing how students respond to them. Personally, I would not want to exclusively use the building thinking classrooms teaching method as students often struggle to adjust to prepare for exams under this model. However, there would be great benefits in implementing this style into my classroom for certain days and lessons. This would allow students to collaborate and stretch their ability to think through concepts. Yet I would also want there to be times that students could take notes or complete work independently. Finding a way to use a mix of the building thinking classroom style and more traditional classroom styles could allow students and teachers to have the best of both worlds.  

Written by Jacie Staedtler, and Nicole Swanson