Modifying Your Thinking Classroom for Different Settings: A Supplement to Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics

Good information. My district did a book-study with this.

A fantastic addition to Liljedahl’s “Creating Thinking Classrooms!” It provides smart adaptations especially in these times when physical distance is necessary as much as possible.

I was thinking this book was going to give me info about different settings within the classroom, but it’s all about virtual settings, homeschool settings, etc. So if you’re a classroom teacher, I wouldn’t suggest getting this. Just stick with Building a Thinking Classroom.

Great and useful ideas for teaching math questions in different formats

I teach, solely, virtual school for 8th grade. I found 2 chapters in the book to apply to my own asynchronous and synchronous classrooms (students have curriculum in both arenas). However, these chapters are not really as dense as the original book. Clearly, this is more of an add-on to what has been established, Liljedahl goes so much to say that in the introduction. However, I finished reading and wanting MORE. MORE something to go on, more ideas...just more.I have been trying (I'd say about at about 50%) to maintain many of the practices in the original book and apply them digitally, but it proves quite difficult in many situations. As an illustrative example: being virtual allows me to have visibly random groupings for my students, as well as boards where students who are in groups can work collaboratively as they would in a brick-and-mortar setting. However, Liljedahl really doesn't talk about class sizes much here. Maybe, Liljedahl assumes that the class size stays at about 35ish or under as you would see in a brick-and-mortar setting? Regardless, many of my classes have ~50 students in attendance. Even if I place 5 students in breakout rooms (keeping it random each day), I still have to circulate through 10 breakout rooms during the synchronous class period. Needless to say, it is a lot to manage virtually. Keeping track of the "knowledgefeed" and updating it (spoiler alert: it is mentioned in this edition of BTC), managing student behavior in breakout rooms, monitoring the main room in case students get kicked out of class or come late, making sure students are getting the correct links working for their "collaborative space," etc. Virtual school has a lot of drawbacks - particularly when students do not all have the same access to broadband internet service. Not to say that the content in this book isn't helpful, I am not as inspired as I was after reading (and re-reading) the first "Building Thinking Classrooms" edition.I recognize that this edition was brought on by educators and students learning through our new "normal;" education has changed. So, we as educators, also must modify our teaching habits. I was just hoping Liljedahl had something more meaningful or insightful to offer here...something that I had not already been trying on my own when coming up with adaptations of the 14 practices of BTC.