Building Thinking Classrooms: A Movement Partners Is Proud to Support

On a gray Connecticut morning in September at Manchester High School, about 60 educators filed into a large professional development room, defined by small tables, large windows, and walls adorned with dry-erase boards. Within minutes, they were on their feet, huddled around Peter Liljedahl (founder of Building Thinking Classrooms—BTC), who was hooking them with a story and a challenging task. 

As people stood in random triads, markers in hand, they wrestled with a math problem none of them had seen before. The room hummed—not with side chatter, but with genuine, audible thinking: 

“What if we tried…?”

“Wait, that pattern breaks here…”

“Show me how you got that.” 

Every wall was covered with evolving diagrams, crossed-out attempts, and half-formed ideas that gradually sharpened into solutions. Liljedahl moved quietly among the groups, offering just enough of a nudge to keep them in productive struggle, never stealing the thinking back.

When participants finally stepped back from the boards at the end of the day, they were grinning and talking with each other; they were both recharged and intellectually spent. What they experienced is not a gimmick, but a vision of classrooms where thinking is visible, collective, and irresistible—quietly revolutionary.

Over the past three years, Partners has worked alongside Liljedahl to help educators across Connecticut and beyond redesign classrooms so that thinking is no longer accidental or reserved for a few students, but becomes the daily work of every child. This year, that partnership expands, as we take on the role of hosting the 4th Annual BTC Conference, June 29–30, 2026, in New Haven, CT. 

The Core Question: How Do We Get Students to Think?

Peter Liljedahl began this work with a deceptively simple question: How can we get more students to think—and to think longer? After observing hundreds of classrooms, he saw that students often spent much of their time mimicking procedures, waiting to be helped, or doing just enough to stay compliant. Real problem-solving and deep reasoning were rare.

Over fifteen years of design-based research, Liljedahl and the hundreds of teachers he’s worked with systematically “broke” one classroom norm after another—where students sat, how tasks were given, how groups were formed, when the teacher talked, what counted as participation—to see which changes actually increased thinking. From this work emerged 14 specific, “norm-busting” practices that have proved to reliably increase student engagement and cognitive demand.

First published in Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics, Grades K–12, this framework is now being used by educators around the world.

What a Thinking Classroom Looks and Feels Like

A BTC lesson does not begin with the old “I do, we do, you do” pattern so typical and unquestioned in classrooms across America. Instead, students find the first entry-point into a complex, carefully sequenced thinking task—often posted on the board or wall—and move quickly into small groups to begin tackling it. The teacher supports students as they think and gradually increases the cognitive load as each group is ready. The shift is profound: from “teacher tells, students answer” to “teacher designs conditions in which students do the heavy cognitive lifting.”

Consolidation after each lesson helps students formalize ideas they’ve wrestled with. This is when Liljedahl helps students take their thoughts and package them into learning. “Because this (consolidation) is so important, I dedicate a third of the lesson to it,” he says. “If I don’t close it, the rest doesn’t matter.”

Several features stand out:

• Vertical, non-permanent surfaces. Students work standing up at whiteboards instead of sitting at desks over paper. This makes their thinking visible to peers and to the teacher, reduces anonymity (and with it, disengagement), and lowers the risk of trying an idea that might be wrong—because it can be erased and revised in seconds.
• Visibly random groups. Students are frequently placed in random groups of three, and the randomization is public. This breaks down social barriers, distributes expertise, and helps every student enter the group expecting to think and contribute, rather than to hide or let someone else carry the cognitive load.
• Micro-moves that keep thinking in students’ hands. Teachers resist the urge to “rescue” students too quickly from productive struggle and instead focus on answering only the questions that help students keep thinking, rather than “Is this right?” or “Will this be on the test?”
• Purposeful consolidation. After tasks, classes engage in guided gallery walks, shared discussion, and student-created notes that help individuals solidify what they have learned and prepare for future independent work.

These are not gimmicks, fads, or isolated practices. They are empirically-deduced practices that function together to change who is doing the intellectual work. In Liljedahl’s words, thinking and engagement “travel together”—the more students do the talking, the more they do the learning.

The impact goes beyond test scores. BTC classrooms routinely report gains in collaboration, perseverance, risk-taking, and students’ sense of themselves as capable mathematicians and thinkers. 

By shifting attention from what teachers deliver to the conditions that support student thinking, Liljedahl has helped spark a movement. Unlike so many district directives, BTC is spreading not by top-down mandate but through teacher enthusiasm and professional empowerment. 

“Peter doesn’t have a theory about rolling this out in districts or states,” Isobel Stevenson, Director of Organizational Learning at Partners says. “It’s about flattening the profession—putting the power in the hands of teachers.”

Why Partners Is “All In”

Partners exists to help school districts reimagine teaching and learning, dismantle instructional inequities, and support systemic improvement so that all students can flourish. BTC speaks directly to that mission.

• It is research-based and practice-tested. BTC is grounded in years of disciplined inquiry, but it is also deeply practical. Teachers can start small—with a single practice like vertical surfaces or random groups—and see tangible shifts in student behavior and discourse within weeks (if not sooner).
• It addresses core challenges our colleagues in the field name. Superintendents, principals, and teachers consistently ask: How do we move beyond compliance? How do we foster real problem solving, not worksheet completion? How might we deepen engagement? How do we get students more directly involved in the learning process? BTC offers concrete tools to redesign learning environments so that thinking becomes the default rather than the exception.
• It is a movement that grows from the classroom up. BTC spreads not through mandates, but because teachers experience its impact and share it with colleagues. That aligns with Partners’ belief in strengthening professional communities, honoring practitioner expertise, and building capacity from the inside out.
• Its core moves transfer beyond math. While Liljedahl’s research and initial implementation focused on mathematics classrooms, we see direct application of BTC practices in other content areas and with adults. The same design elements—rich tasks, visible thinking, intentional grouping, and carefully calibrated teacher moves—help cultivate deeper engagement, collaboration, and problem-solving in literacy, science, social studies, and in professional learning for leaders and teachers themselves.

Educators attending BTC workshops experience firsthand both the discomfort and joy their students feel when classrooms are designed for genuine thinking. 

Educator testimonials are powerful. A participant in a recent CT workshop who’d always felt she “wasn’t good at math” said that the way the individual tasks were structured enabled her to discover a new sense of confidence about her ability to solve math problems. Others that day agreed. Another participant said that Liljedahl’s continual prompting to find more variations while her group was dividing fractions helped her stay curious and motivated, rather than distracted or busy competing with others.

Yet beyond this alignment and participant satisfaction is something more, says Richard Lemons, Executive Director of Partners. “When I enter classrooms across Connecticut to lead instructional rounds and participate in school visits, I see concrete evidence of shifting instructional practice—vertical, non-permanent surfaces, small groups of students working on complex academic tasks, teachers monitoring and nudging, as opposed to telling and correcting.” 

“More importantly,” Lemons adds. “I can see these practices result in students thinking in deep, sustained, and sometimes joyful ways. We have not seen such visible shifts in classroom practice as a result of a singular intervention in years, perhaps ever.” 

Join Us in New Haven

Our partnership with Peter Liljedahl now extends to the national stage. On June 29–30, 2026, Partners will host the 4th Annual National Building Thinking Classrooms Conference in New Haven, in close collaboration with Liljedahl and the BTC team. The conference will feature Liljedahl’s keynotes, educator-led sessions, and opportunities for system leaders to explore what it looks like to support BTC at scale. 

If you are a teacher, coach, math coordinator, or principal asking how to create classrooms where every student is thinking—every day—BTC offers one of the most powerful, research-backed pathways we know. Partners is excited to learn alongside Liljedahl and educators across the region as we build thinking classrooms—and thinking systems—together.