Building Thinking Classrooms 2025 Annual Conference

Thinking classrooms are learning classrooms, but how do we maximize student thinking during consolidation - the pivotal phase where individual ideas transform into collective understanding and concepts are generalized and connected? Student engagement in consolidation is critical for deep, sticky learning that persists beyond the lesson. In this dynamic session, we’ll explore structures and routines that boost engagement and help students notice patterns, listen actively, build on each others’ ideas, and take the lead in synthesizing their learning as a class. You’ll walk away with practical strategies and ready-to-use tools to transform your consolidation into a powerful catalyst for student-led learning and lasting comprehension.

In this interactive session, participants will immerse themselves in the experience of a secondary thinking classroom by completing a rich problem-solving task using the Thinking Classroom framework. With the end in mind, participants will collaboratively work to:

1. Develop a learning goal that aligns with the task.
2. Design a sequence of student work that best supports the desired learning goal.
3. Craft targeted questions to facilitate the consolidation process, ensuring that all students' thinking is recognized, valued and connected.

By the end of the session, participants will gain valuable insights and practical tools for creating a structured, student-centered consolidation and closure process in their classrooms.

We began building our Thinking Classrooms in mathematics. But it doesn’t take long to see that the BTC framework is an engaging way for students to create meaning in subjects across the curriculum. Participants in this session will experience a Social Studies/ELA lesson and explore ways to take the content they are already teaching and transform it so that students are actively questioning and discussing as they learn.

This session explores how Newark Public Schools scaled the implementation of Building Thinking Classrooms (BTC) practices across 60 schools using teacher and administrator residencies.  Participants will learn about the challenges and successes of implementing BTC practices in a large district and gain practical insights into creating professional learning experiences that drive long-term transformation in mathematics education.

In this session, we will reflect on our transformative journey of incorporating “street data” into coaching cycles with teachers implementing Building Thinking Classrooms.  We will share a coach’s story about leveraging student and teacher qualitative data, along with formative quantitative data to foster curiosity and disrupt preconceived notions about students. This process strengthened our commitment to elevate student voice as a critical first step for deeper learning and greater traction when exploring and implementing the BTC practices, regardless of where our teachers were in their journey.