Teachers Bring "Building Thinking Classrooms" Model Across Subjects
Aug 12, 2026 | by Ildi Carlisle-Cummins
When the PCS math department overhauled our middle school math curriculum two years ago, the entire department read the book Building Thinking Classrooms by Peter Liljedahl. They built this hands-on, collaborative learning philosophy into middle school math-- and shared the positive results with their colleagues across departments.
This week, Digital Arts Teacher Ken Alley used this model for a first AP Art History Lesson. He shared that students were asked to conduct visual, historical and contextual analysis, along with answering the following questions about a particular art piece: How do we know what we know: what scientific techniques or areas of study have been used to analyze the object? How much of our current understanding of the artwork is speculation, and what facts drive these hypotheses?
One key tool of the Building Thinking Classrooms model is shared white board space, which allows students to work through problems together in small groups to wrestle with educational concepts before teachers lecture on the topic. The boards, hung on walls or desktop easels also allow for teachers to scan quickly across the room to see which groups might need support.
For anyone wondering if the introduction of 1:1 Chromebooks has meant that PCS students spend all their classroom time on screens, this project reveals a welcome answer: not a chance!