Building a Thinking Classroom: How Learning Spaces Can Get Students Thinking, Moving, and Collaborating
What happens when a classroom is designed not only for instruction, but for thinking?
The rise of collaborative teaching models is changing the way educators use the classroom. Students may move between whole-group instruction, independent work, small-group problem solving, discussion, and hands-on collaboration within a single class period.
Peter Liljedahl’s Building Thinking Classrooms framework offers one particularly visible example of that shift. Among its practices is having small groups work together at vertical, erasable surfaces where their thinking can develop in the open.
For Platinum, the larger idea goes beyond any one instructional framework: when learning becomes more active, visible, and collaborative, the physical environment has to support it.
When learning becomes more active, visible, and collaborative, the physical environment has to support it.
A Classroom Can Be More Than a Front and a Back
The traditional classroom has historically been organized around a dominant instructional wall: teacher at the front, students facing forward, and one primary surface for presenting information.
That arrangement still serves an important purpose. There are times when an entire class needs to focus on the same information or the same speaker. But classrooms are increasingly expected to support more than one type of activity.
Students may listen together and then separate into groups. They may move from instruction to problem solving, from discussion to writing, or from independent thinking to collaborative work.
A room designed around only one point of attention can make those transitions harder than they need to be.
The design question becomes: can the room support multiple ways of learning without having to be reinvented every time the activity changes?
Turn the Perimeter Into Working Space
One way to create that flexibility is to think differently about the classroom perimeter.
Walls are often treated as boundaries, display areas, or places for a single instructional board. But they can also become working space.
Distributed writable surfaces allow multiple groups to use different areas of the room simultaneously. Instead of every collaborative activity competing for the board at the front, students can move toward different surfaces and establish temporary working zones.
A wall can become somewhere to develop an idea, map a process, work through a problem, compare approaches, organize information, revise thinking, or share work with others.
The surface is no longer simply where information is presented. It becomes part of the activity.
The surface is no longer simply where information is presented. It becomes part of the activity.
Visibility Changes the Room
When students work on shared vertical surfaces, their thinking becomes visible across the environment.
That has spatial implications. A teacher moving through the classroom can see where activity is happening and where groups may need support. Students can see that other groups are approaching the same question differently. Ideas can remain visible long enough to become part of a larger classroom conversation.
The room itself begins to hold information. That is different from a classroom where most student thinking disappears into individual notebooks or screens.
If visible thinking is valuable, the practical design question is simple: where are we giving it room to happen?
Collaboration Needs Space
Putting students into groups does not automatically create a collaborative environment. They need somewhere to work together.
That means considering not only how much writable surface exists, but how usable it actually is. A large continuous surface may accommodate several students. Several smaller surfaces may allow multiple groups to work independently. Mobile surfaces may let the workspace shift with the activity.
There is no single correct configuration because classrooms do not all function the same way. The appropriate solution depends on how many people are using the room, what they are doing, how they move, and how frequently the activity changes.
Think in Working Zones
Rather than dividing a classroom simply into “front” and “back,” it can be useful to think in terms of working zones.
One area may support whole-group instruction. Another may support small-group collaboration. A wall might provide large-format writable space. Another area might support display, technology, storage, or reference information.
These zones do not necessarily need permanent boundaries. In a flexible environment, they may overlap and change throughout the day. What matters is that the physical environment gives educators options.
A room should not dictate one teaching method simply because that is the way its surfaces were originally arranged.
Surface Area Is a Planning Decision
Writable surface becomes a spatial-planning issue when we stop asking what size board usually belongs in a classroom and start asking what the room needs to support.
How many people need writable space at the same time?
Will they be writing individually or as a group?
How far away does information need to be visible?
Does earlier thinking need to remain visible while new ideas develop?
Can people gather around the surface comfortably?
Can the teacher see activity across the room?
Does the placement interfere with circulation?
Does the room need to transition between different teaching modes?
Those answers should help determine the amount, placement, and type of writable surface—not simply convention.
Do Not Forget Movement
Vertical collaboration changes how people move. When students leave their desks and gather around different areas of a classroom, circulation becomes part of the learning environment.
A surface may technically fit on a wall but still be poorly positioned if furniture prevents students from reaching it. Two writable areas may look appropriate on a plan but create congestion when groups gather around them simultaneously.
Doors, technology, storage, furniture, sightlines, and walking paths all influence whether a surface is genuinely usable. Wall planning and floor planning should work together because the wall only works in relationship with what happens in front of it.
Design for Change
The same classroom may need to support presenting, listening, writing, discussing, problem solving, collaborating, displaying, and reflecting.
The strongest learning environments make it easier to move between those behaviors. That does not mean filling every wall with writable material. It means deciding intentionally which surfaces should support instruction, which should support collaboration, which should organize information, and which should remain visually quiet.
The objective is not more surface for the sake of more surface. It is the right surface in the right place for the activity that needs to happen there.
Give Thinking Somewhere to Happen
Building Thinking Classrooms provides a useful example of something much larger happening in education: teaching is becoming less dependent on a single point of instruction and increasingly capable of moving between different modes of participation.
At Platinum, we believe the wall should not be treated as something addressed after the floor plan is finished. It is part of the learning environment.
When walls are planned alongside furniture, movement, technology, storage, sightlines, and instructional behavior, they can do much more than define the boundaries of a room. They can become places where ideas develop, groups gather, information becomes visible, and thinking has room to happen.
Evidence & Further Reading
Building Thinking Classrooms: A Conversation With Dr. Peter Liljedahl
Liljedahl, P., Clarke, A., & Morrison, N. (2021). Journal of Mathematics Education at Teachers College, 12(1), 1–7.
A conversation with Peter Liljedahl exploring the research and classroom practices behind the Building Thinking Classrooms framework.
How to Turn Your Math Classroom Into a ‘Thinking Classroom’ — Edutopia
An educator-focused look at Thinking Classroom practices and how they can encourage student participation, problem-solving, and collaboration.
Improve Student Thinking in the Classroom Using Vertical Whiteboard Teaching — [Math]odology
Further reading on vertical whiteboard teaching and the use of writable surfaces to support active thinking, movement, and collaboration.
Continue the Conversation
Interested in learning more about the research behind evidence based learning environments?
Schedule our Designing for Visual Acuity and Cognitive Clarity CEU to explore how neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and intentional design can improve learning outcomes.
Or explore Platinum’s integrated vertical learning solutions designed to support active, collaborative, and future ready classrooms.
Share
Newsletter
Sign up for our newsletter to get the latest updates and insider news.