In this hands-on session, participants will explore efficient ways to harness formative and summative assessment tools to guide instruction, foster student agency, and provide equitable feedback. You’ll complete a sample student-choice assessment, practice grading for mastery with a clear rubric, and learn strategies for scaffolding within assessments and assessing learning meaningfully. Discover time-saving techniques to communicate progress effectively with students and parents while keeping assessments manageable and impactful.
Technology can serve as a powerful platform to greatly enhance students' active learning experiences in a thinking classroom. We will deeply explore curricular tasks through which interacting with technology as an exploratory, computational, and coding tool can greatly and meaningfully enhance student groups' active learning experiences. Here, we emphasize effective use of technology for learning in a thinking classroom. Participants will learn, through powerful, interactive, ready-to-use task examples, different ways through which technology can enhance student engagement within thier learning by exploring, computing, and coding. With respect to teaching, we will explore interactive task examples ways through which technology can help teachers foster hints and extensions, provide a platform for students to create and construct, and also code. We will also explore how we can effectively use technology to implement variation theory within the creation of thin-slice activities, as well as exploring the importance and vitalness of its use within students' active learning experiences. We will also explore and discuss alterations and additions teachers can implement within an existing thinking-classroom environment to help maximize student engagement and flow.
Participants will leave with four concrete, ready-to-implement strategies that build student independence through structured feedback, purposeful questioning, self-assessment, and supported note-taking. By experiencing each tool as learners first, participants will better understand how these routines create consistent expectations, promote productive struggle, and help students take ownership of their thinking and learning.
Participants will leave with a clear understanding of the philosophy behind using student self-correction of their assessments and reflection as a way to empower students and help them tell their own math story. Participants will learn how centering student voice provides immediate, relevant feedback and shifts traditional power dynamics in the learning environment. The session will share the origins of this action research project, findings, and a concrete classroom example demonstrating how self-correction, scoring, and reflection function in practice.
Participants will leave with a clear understanding of how to design and implement effective thin slicing that promotes sustained thinking, increases student ownership, and supports meaningful problem-solving in a Building Thinking Classroom, and will be equipped with practical strategies, ready-to-use examples, and planning tools to create thin slicing lessons that deepen student reasoning and keep learners actively engaged.
Participants will leave this session confident in their ability to transform word problems into meaningful sense-making opportunities for all students. By experiencing and scripting a 3 Listens Launch, educators will learn how to adapt the familiar 3 Reads language routine to promote thinking, collaboration, and equitable access to any word problem. Through active participation—experiencing the routine as learners, analyzing its structure, and practicing with peers—participants will gain the tools to design and facilitate verbal launches that keep students from “number-plucking” and steer them instead to problem-solving as they surface key quantities and construct mathematical meaning in context.
A middle school math and science educator in El Dorado County from 2002 to 2018, Chelsea spent 16 years guided by the belief that all students can learn to the highest levels. From 2018 to 2026, she served as a Math Curriculum Specialist for the Sacramento County Office of Education... Read More →
Kyle Ferreira van Leer (he/him) firmly believes that all students are capable of high level mathematics engagement. He began his educational career in the middle school sphere. Kyle spent 8 years - from Boston to Sacramento - teaching 7th and 8th grade math in Title I schools, mostly serving migrant students... Read More →
Homework doesn't work. The students who should be doing it aren't, and the students who are doing it often don't need it. Check-your-understanding questions (CYUs) are different. Students do them. Everyone does them. And many students actually enjoy doing them. Why is that? In this session, I explore the key differences between homework and CYUs and what it is about CYUs that creates such a dramatically different experience for students. Participants will leave with a deeper understanding of what makes CYUs so effective and how they can be used to increase student participation, engagement, and learning.
You’ve arranged your furniture, launched your random groups, and standing vertical surfaces are a daily norm. But how do you sustain the momentum when students hit a wall—or fly through the content? The secret lies in strategic task design. In this session, we’ll look at practical strategies for mining your adopted curriculum for core concepts and pairing them with online resources to map out your progressions.
Math Teacher 6-8, Robert Louis Stevenson/Saint Helena Unified
With over 25 years in education, I believe that strong relationships are at the heart of meaningful learning. I am passionate about helping educators create classrooms where students feel connected, valued, and empowered to think deeply. While strengthening mathematical thinking is... Read More →
Tom Lewis (he/him) is a consultant on the BTC U.S. Team and has been supporting teachers, schools and districts with implementing Building Thinking Classrooms in grades K-12 since 2021. He is currently working with Peter Liljedahl, Author of Building Thinking Classrooms, on several... Read More →
Those who are new to BTC will leave with a knowledge of how to put the BTC practices together for a complete lesson for younger students. In addition, the major perceived obstacles to implementing BTC in lower grades will be demystified giving the participants tools and inspiration to start BTC in their classrooms.Those who have experience with BTC will leave with practical tips around launch, knowledge mobility, maintaining flow, and other practices.
Technology can serve as a powerful platform to greatly enhance students' active learning experiences in a thinking classroom. We will deeply explore curricular tasks through which interacting with technology as an exploratory, computational, and coding tool can greatly and meaningfully enhance student groups' active learning experiences. Here, we emphasize effective use of technology for learning in a thinking classroom. Participants will learn, through powerful, interactive, ready-to-use task examples, different ways through which technology can enhance student engagement within thier learning by exploring, computing, and coding. With respect to teaching, we will explore interactive task examples ways through which technology can help teachers foster hints and extensions, provide a platform for students to create and construct, and also code. We will also explore how we can effectively use technology to implement variation theory within the creation of thin-slice activities, as well as exploring the importance and vitalness of its use within students' active learning experiences. We will also explore and discuss alterations and additions teachers can implement within an existing thinking-classroom environment to help maximize student engagement and flow.
Technology can serve as a powerful platform to greatly enhance students' active learning experiences in a thinking classroom. We will deeply explore curricular tasks through which interacting with technology as an exploratory, computational, and coding tool can greatly and meaningfully enhance student groups' active learning experiences. Here, we emphasize effective use of technology for learning in a thinking classroom. Participants will learn, through powerful, interactive, ready-to-use task examples, different ways through which technology can enhance student engagement within thier learning by exploring, computing, and coding. With respect to teaching, we will explore interactive task examples ways through which technology can help teachers foster hints and extensions, provide a platform for students to create and construct, and also code. We will also explore how we can effectively use technology to implement variation theory within the creation of thin-slice activities, as well as exploring the importance and vitalness of its use within students' active learning experiences. We will also explore and discuss alterations and additions teachers can implement within an existing thinking-classroom environment to help maximize student engagement and flow.
The goal of this session is to inspire teachers, educators, and school leaders to reimagine classroom spaces in ways that foster a true thinking environment. Traditional setups often prioritize desks and chairs, but do these arrangements actually support deep engagement and collaboration? In a Building Thinking Classroom, students spend most of their time standing and working at Vertical Non-Permanent Surfaces, which raises important questions: If students are rarely seated, what purpose do tables and chairs serve? Are they essential tools for learning or potential distractions? This session will challenge assumptions about classroom design and explore how intentional space planning can transform the way students think and learn.
Formative assessment has traditionally been viewed as the gathering of information that informs teaching. But what happens when we recast formative assessment as the gathering of information that informs learning? In this session, I explore how this shift changes not only the purpose of formative assessment, but also the way it is designed, implemented, and experienced by students. Participants will leave with a deeper understanding of why this shift matters and practical strategies for implementing this important BTC practice in their own classrooms.
Do your elementary students struggle to work together, stay engaged, or even start thinking? You’re not alone! In this upbeat, hands-on session, we’ll unpack the micromoves—those small but mighty teacher actions—that turn chaos into collaboration and hesitation into engagement. Discover how to design powerful launches, set clear norms for communication, and use simple tools (like the behavior rubric and speech bubbles!) to guide productive group behavior. Walk away with practical strategies you can use tomorrow to get every student talking, thinking, and working together—one micromove at a time.
This session offers practical tips on developing and implementing student navigation tools which are visual unit roadmaps that map specific learning objectives to concrete examples of basic, intermediate, and advanced problems. By clearly defining the progression of mastery, the tool empowers students to track their own proficiency and take active ownership of their learning journey. They bring clarity to learning objectives and assessment pathways within a middle or high school mathematics environment. We will demonstrate their versatile applications in the thinking classroom: as a roadmap for daily objectives, as a powerful self-assessment and reflection tool for student ownership, and as a review and formative assessment aid for targeted feedback. Participants will walk through a collaborative, iterative process for designing these tools, which feature explicit, leveled example problems. Attendees will leave with the specific process necessary to start creating their own navigation tools and a clear understanding of how this approach promotes engagement, builds confidence, fosters student autonomy, and offers a scalable strategy for district-wide coordination.
