This workshop focuses on how intentional lesson and unit design can create classrooms where students consistently engage as mathematical thinkers. Participants examine how routines, task design, questioning, student workspaces, and assessment practices work together to promote reasoning, collaboration, and perseverance. Drawing from vetted research, educators will explore practical structures for planning instruction that prioritizes student thinking over procedural compliance. Time is dedicated to applying these ideas to real lessons and units so participants leave with actionable next steps

• Lessons and units that prioritize procedures and coverage over student thinking
• Overreliance on teacher-directed instruction (“I do, we do, you do”) that limits productive struggle
• Classroom routines and environments that inhibit collaboration, risk-taking, and sense-making
• Assessment practices that emphasize event-based grading rather than evidence of student thinking and growth
• Lack of coherence between tasks, discussion, assessment, and long-term unit planning

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1. Designing Thinking Tasks That Promote Engagement
   Participants learn how to create and adapt low-floor, high-ceiling, open-middle, and thin-sliced tasks that invite all students to begin, sustain engagement, and explore multiple solution paths without being told how to solve the problem.
2. Structuring Classrooms to Foster Independence and Collaboration
   Teachers gain strategies for using random grouping, non-permanent workspaces, and  classroom layout to increase participation, reduce social hierarchies, and make student thinking visible and shared.‍
3. Responding to Student Questions in Ways That Keep Thinking Alive
   Educators develop skills for responding to student questions with “keep-thinking” prompts that redirect ownership back to learners, reduce dependency on the teacher, and encourage reflection, self-verification, and perseverance.