Building Thinking Classrooms 2025 Annual Conference

Pre-Conference: Building Thinking Classrooms 101

This introductory pre-conference session is designed for newcomers to Building Thinking Classrooms. Participants of the main Building Thinking Classrooms Conference who are unfamiliar with the Building Thinking Classrooms (BTC) framework are highly encouraged to participate in this pre-conference session to fully access the content of the main conference sessions.
This pre-conference introductory session outlines some of the 14 practices outlined in the book Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics by Peter Liljedahl.
Participants will experience mathematics through a Thinking Classroom environment and learn how to implement their own Thinking Classroom, including how to launch the environment and build in additional strategies over time.

Building Thinking Classrooms (BTC) has revolutionized the way we engage students in deep mathematical thinking. But how do we align BTC practices with district-adopted curriculum resources? Too often, we default to a “one-size-fits-all” approach when what we really need is “one-size-fits-each.” In this session, we will guide participants through practical strategies for adapting unit and lesson plans that honor both the structure of a district curriculum and the core principles of BTC. Whether you're navigating pacing guides, mandated resources, or diverse student needs, you'll gain insights into lesson planning that fosters thinking, flexibility, and student-centered learning. Walk away with tools to transform any curriculum into a dynamic, thinking-centered experience for all learners.

How can we focus on the verbing of mathematics during the Launch, Body and Closing of a math lesson? Lets look at how we can craft hands-on experiences with the use of linear, set and area models within the building thinking classroom framework. We will chat about how we can center on change and motion while we play with structure and then name it in a Thinking Classroom.

In this session I will both highlight and demonstrate the teaching methodology I call "Histematics" which is essentially the use of history to teach mathematics and the use of mathematics to teach history. This is an attempt to decompartmentalize academic disciplines and increase intrinsic student engagement with mathematics by adding cultural relevancy as well as a more interesting storytelling aspect to math instruction. Black History exemplars and events will be used to teach math topics.

This session will provide participants with strategies and resources to integrate social justice and mathematics to provide equitable and culturally relevant instruction. Participants will be provided with resources to understand how social issues are historical, and reform involves problem-solving through mathematics. Participants can take what they learn to build community within their classrooms with their diverse student populations.

The 14 practices promote accessibility and equity in the classroom, but our own implicit biases, often influenced by institutional labels, can still get in the way of effectively enacting these practices.  In this session, we will explore how these biases can impact our perceptions of student capabilities.  Let’s think together about how we can shape the classroom environment to highlight students’ brilliance and spark our own genuine curiosity about students’ mathematical thinking.

As teachers, so much of what drives our assessment practices revolves around numbers. But do these numbers really tell us what we think they do? In this session, we will unpack our grading and reporting practices, interrogate their purpose and validity, and explore whether they truly serve all of our students. Together, we’ll challenge some of the assumptions we hold about numbers in our grade books and consider what might lie beyond them.

Join Maegan Giroux, as she walks through how she and her grade 6/7 students' assessed a full unit, from start to finish. Maegan will share student work and comments on the assessment approach including the various ways the class chose to embed conversations, observations, and technology into the assessment. This session will include time for Q&A and open discussion around the unit was planned and assessed.