Mathematics Tasks for the Thinking Classroom, Grades K-5 (Corwin Mathematics Series)

I did a math book club virtually last summer with Mix & Math 360 where we read Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics. I was AMAZED at the difference the BTC mindset had on my classroom of mixed ability learners. The only problem was that everyone that read the book needed to find non-curricular thinking tasks and problems to use alongside the BTC framework, but there weren't a lot of clear resources to find them.This book is THICK. It's broken down by grade levels/bands that would be appropriate for different grades. I really appreciate the detail of showing a range of grades for each task, and how the level of difficulty reduces for each consecutive grade using that same task. It's essentially a breakdown of how challenging any given problem will be for the typically developing math classroom. If you wanted to focus on building your TBC routines at the beginning of the year, you could choose some problems from their previous year to build confidence in the new math strategies. If you teach a group of advanced learners, you can find problems that will be more challenging for your students.Building Thinking Classrooms is all about, you guessed it, getting students to -actually- think about what they are doing to learn math in a more holistic way, and moves away from "plug and chug" answer-centered computation. Mathematics Tasks will help educators have a streamlined resource to help us break away from individual, paper and pencil work to build the math literacy our student deserve. We are the ones that need to change and grow our thinking about math teaching to truly help all of our students bloom. Yay, math! (Never did I think I'd say that 25 years ago! 😉)P.S. hot tip for building your random daily groupings: I use a deck of SushiGo! cards that I organized in sets of three cards for each type. I keep them in a ziplock bag on my desk, I count how many groups of three I need each morning, grab that many sets of cards, lightly shuffle, and pass them out face down. The kids love finding and matching up with their other sushi partners! Second tip: Always have your groups hand back their cards in the set of three so they are always matched up and ready to rock each morning. Happy math teaching! 🤓💕

I teach middle school and still found the tasks useful, but above all the updates to many of the practices here were very valuable. Especially the updates to the Meaningful Notes, the process here was much more useful than in the red book and has been successful with my 7th and 8th graders.

I read Building Thinking Classrooms two years ago and it revolutionized my teaching style. This companion book is just as wonderful. I teach high school math, and even though this book is written for K-5, I’ve already found many ways I will use the tasks and information given.

I am not a teacher of grades K-5 but this book was extremely useful since part 1 about updates or clarifications to BTC practices. I had some minor issues after the original book and all of those were addressed in part 1 of this book.

It is extremely helpful to teach math in a whole new way that is fun and gets kids thinking. They learn to work with peers to find answers and learn critical thinking skills while having fun.

Awesome resource for getting students to THINK rather than mimic! The book is super well laid out. LOTS of great info without feeling overwhelming. I suggest you read his first book first, which is more about the WHY and the HOW TO of BTC with a few tasks to get you started.

Waited for this one! Love using the thinking classroom in my fifth grade class. Gets the scholars collaborating and sharing their thinking while building their understanding and knowledge

I purchased this book “new” and it showed up damaged.

First, a short summary of the book Thinking Classroom. Secondly, there were some nice exercises with student solutions and a summary by the author. The exercises part was more interesting because TCM had already been read. A very useful book that could also be in Estonian.