Incorporate Thinking Classrooms Into YOUR Practice

Over the summer, I read this amazing book about how to teach math and applied it to my tutoring sessions. I saw fantastic yields over the year before coming to OTU, such as students who could not solve for x in an equation to being able to describe quadratic word problems, create their own variables and explain (while showing) their own thought process! Even though this book specifically is "designed" to teach math, I think there are some key points you can apply that have worked for me! However, to get a true holistic view, I do urge you to read the book yourself if you can get a copy!

1) Have your students work on a dry-erasable board! The idea here is that students can have a surface to show their work while you, as the instructor, can outline (with a different colour marker) or address areas of concern that are written on the board. This is a great way for me to see if there are any misconceptions, and when combined with number 2, helps set the stage for student autonomy! (Since it was math tutoring, the students could do their "homework" on the board. However, for other courses, you can give thought-provoking questions for students to write down their thoughts.)

2) Answering Questions with Questions! This may seem unintuitive, but Peter Liljedahl argues that by giving the student the answer, they will stop thinking. Instead, we are giving guiding instructions through questions. This forces students to try to answer our questions through their understanding of the question. At first, students might crave the validation to be correct, but we want to build student autonomy where they know and understand that they are right.

Example/ How do you know that? Can you show me? Does anything seem off?

3) Teach students how to make their own notes. The book recommends graphic organizers for students as a way for them to display their knowledge. I personally don't think every student learns through a graphic organizer. So instead, I tell my students that their understanding of the unit must fit on one page and look through your class notes to pick out what's crucial. They're free to put subheadings with text under (like a graphic organizer) or even have processes of the hardest questions on the page, it's all up to them! Having students create and give value to their own notes allows for deeper understanding.

Otherwise, I hope you guys learned a thing or two from this little blog post, and I hope maybe we can collaborate in the future (if we somehow cross paths)!!

Reference: Liljedahl, P. (2021). Building thinking classrooms in mathematics, grades K-12: 14 teaching practices for enhancing learning. Sage Publications Inc.

JohnsonH@OTU
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