A teacher using Peter Liljedahl's Building Thinking Classrooms approach might invite fifth graders who have just built rectangular prisms with connecting cubes to compare how they described their models and which strategies they used. That kind of comparison, where students explain their own reasoning and make sense of a classmate's, is precisely what Building Thinking Classrooms asks teachers to create more of.

The idea behind it is straightforward: give students problems worth thinking about and create classroom conditions that keep them thinking, talking, and learning together. Kiddom Florida Math offers a lesson structure that a teacher can use to make that kind of thinking a regular part of the school day.

What does Building Thinking Classrooms ask students to do?

Liljedahl's Building Thinking Classrooms approach identifies 14 practices that shift the center of gravity in a math classroom from the teacher's explanation to students' own reasoning. A few of the most recognizable: launching tasks that require genuine thinking rather than procedure retrieval, forming visibly random groups so students work with different peers, and using vertical erasable surfaces so work stays visible and easy to revise. Students see how their classmates approached the same problem. They refine their own thinking. The teacher circulates, asks questions, offers a hint rather than an answer, and watches what the work reveals.

Those practices raise a practical question for districts implementing Building Thinking Classrooms: how does the core curriculum support this kind of teaching? Teachers still need worthwhile mathematical tasks, opportunities to compare strategies, and material they can use to consolidate student thinking around grade-level mathematics. Kiddom Florida Math provides that instructional foundation while leaving BTC decisions about grouping, workspace, questioning, and facilitation in the teacher's hands.

That distinction matters. Building Thinking Classrooms is a teaching approach grounded in Liljedahl's own classroom research. The curriculum materials give teachers problems and a lesson arc to work with. How a teacher uses them (how they form groups, where they ask students to work, which strategies they surface during discussion) is where the approach comes alive.

Where can student discourse happen in a Kiddom math lesson?

Each Kiddom Florida Math lesson follows a Warm-up, Activities, Synthesis, and Cool-down structure that naturally creates opportunities for student discourse. The Warm-up gives students something to notice or wonder about before the main problem arrives. During Activities, they work through tasks and encounter the ideas the lesson is building toward. The Lesson Synthesis brings student thinking into a whole-class conversation, and the Cool-down offers a brief individual check on what each student has understood before the next day begins.

Consider a fifth-grade lesson where students build rectangular prisms with connecting cubes and describe them using length, width, height, and area of the base. Students can compare how they built and described their prisms before bringing those ideas into the whole-class discussion. Their models give the teacher something visible to build the synthesis around.

Florida's Mathematical Thinking and Reasoning standards give that kind of exchange a clear instructional purpose. Students are expected to represent problems in multiple ways, connect different representations to each other, and discuss both their own mathematical thinking and that of their peers. In that fifth-grade rectangular prism lesson, for example, students might compare how they used cube models, explain their thinking with length, width, height, and base area, and work toward more efficient methods they can apply in new situations. Conceptual understanding and procedural fluency develop together in this framework. The MTRs run alongside the B.E.S.T. benchmarks as expectations for how students engage with mathematics, describing the habits of mathematical practice alongside the content students are building.

How do more students take part in the conversation?

A student may have a clear sense of the math and still need support finding the right words to explain it. Math Language Routines give students a predictable structure for explaining ideas, comparing strategies, and making sense of one another’s reasoning, with particular support for multilingual learners. Kiddom also has a guide to first-month Illustrative Math routines that offers useful context for teachers establishing these habits early in the year. Kiddom Florida Math also includes Spanish-language materials, WIDA-aligned scaffolds, and Universal Design for Learning supports.

The teacher decides when and how to deploy those supports. Listening to how students explain their work (what they get right, where the language breaks down, which representations they reach for) is what makes the subsequent whole-class discussion worth having. That judgment, about which student ideas to elevate and how to sequence them, is an important part of sustaining a thinking classroom.

Print materials and manipulatives give teachers additional ways to put the math in students' hands. Whether a student is working with physical tiles or a digital representation, the thinking task remains the same, and keeping that task at the center is what drives the conversation forward.

What does the teacher learn from the work students produce?

Student talk gives a teacher evidence during the lesson. The Cool-down adds an individual check at the end, separate from the group work, that shows what each student understood on their own. Atlas by Kiddom analyzes daily Cool-downs to surface shared misconceptions, group students by need, and prepare targeted next steps for the next lesson. The teacher reviews the recommendations and decides what happens next.

That feedback loop matters in Florida's assessment context. Kiddom Florida Math is aligned to Florida's B.E.S.T. benchmarks, with assessment opportunities designed to prepare students for Florida's statewide mathematics assessments. Florida's assessment system includes FAST Mathematics progress monitoring through Grade 8, with B.E.S.T. end-of-course assessments for Algebra 1 and Geometry. A daily discussion and Cool-down give teachers usable evidence while students are still building understanding, well before assessment time arrives.

Making room for student thinking in Florida math

Building Thinking Classrooms asks a deceptively simple question: are students doing the thinking in your classroom? The answer shows up in what they say to each other, what they draw or build, and whether they can explain a strategy beyond the one introduced by the teacher.

For districts bringing BTC practices into classrooms, the curriculum shouldn't get in the way of that work. Kiddom Florida Math gives teachers grade-level tasks, opportunities for student discourse, mathematical representations, lesson synthesis, and daily evidence of student understanding they can use within a thinking classroom, while teachers make the instructional choices that bring BTC to life.

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Frequently asked questions

What is Building Thinking Classrooms? Building Thinking Classrooms is an instructional approach developed by Peter Liljedahl, built on 14 practices that get students working through problems together, comparing strategies, and explaining their reasoning, instead of watching a demonstration first.

Does Kiddom Florida Math support Building Thinking Classrooms? Kiddom Florida Math gives teachers a problem-based lesson structure, Math Language Routines, and a Warm-up, Activities, Synthesis, and Cool-down cycle that a teacher can use to create the kind of student discourse Building Thinking Classrooms calls for.

How does Kiddom Florida Math align to B.E.S.T. Standards and MTRs? Kiddom Florida Math is aligned to Florida's B.E.S.T. Standards for Mathematics, with all seven Mathematical Thinking and Reasoning standards built into lesson design from Kindergarten through Algebra 1.

Is Kiddom Florida Math designed for FAST assessments? Yes. Florida Math is designed around Florida's FAST Mathematics progress monitoring through grade 8 and connects daily instruction to the same expectations measured on B.E.S.T. end-of-course assessments.

How does Kiddom Florida Math support differentiated math instruction? Florida Math includes Math Language Routines, a Spanish Cognate Toolkit, WIDA-aligned scaffolds, and Universal Design for Learning supports built into lessons, so more students can take part in the same grade-level task.

How does Kiddom help teachers see what students understand? Atlas by Kiddom analyzes daily Cool-downs to surface shared misconceptions, group students by need, and prepare targeted next steps, giving teachers a clear view of student understanding alongside classroom discussion.

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