ESC 14 Elementary Math Newsletter
Winter 2025-26
Contact Information
Email: rsmith@esc14.net
Website: esc14.net
Location: 1850 Texas 351, Abilene, TX, USA
Phone: 325-675-8610
This year, ESC consultants are offering an exciting all-in-one conference where STEM, GT, Content areas, and Curriculum supports are all brought together in one conference. You will get to pick your sessions to build what you need and want to make it a custom fit. So, save the dates and be on the lookout for more information and registration for MergED!
YOU ARE INVITED to a Bluebonnet Coach Regional PLC
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 2nd
K-5 RLA - 8:30 - 10:30
K-5 Math - 10:30 - 12:30
Secondary Math - 1:00 - 3:00
- Internalize units and lessons together as a look ahead for the spring semester.
- Norm together on a strong internalization process to take back and share with your teachers.
- Collaborate with other instructional coaches and administrators who are leading teachers using Bluebonnet Learning!
Click on the green bar below to register.
If you have questions, please contact Brenna Muscatell @ bmuscatell@esc14.net or Cadilyn Smith @ csmith@esc14.net
IMRA
Below are links to informative sites about materials going through the IMRA process.
New Resources for Bluebonnet
The new Specially Designed Instruction (SDI) Field User Guides for Bluebonnet Learning K-5 Mathematics & Secondary Mathematics are comprehensive resources developed to help educators implement SDI for students receiving special education services within the Bluebonnet Learning Math curriculum.
The guides provide practical tools, glossaries, and resources to ensure educators can confidently plan, deliver, and evaluate SDI in math classrooms.
Bluebonnet Learning K-5 & Secondary Math Field User Guide Links
Building Thinking Classrooms
The 14 Building Thinking Classrooms Practices
Building Thinking Classrooms is an educational approach developed by Dr. Peter Liljedahl, professor of mathematics education at Simon Fraser University in Canada. Sparked by observing dozens and dozens of teachers struggle to engage students in deep thinking and problem solving, and observing hundreds of students engaged in a lot of behavior that didn’t include thinking—or learning—Peter set out to find the answer to a simple question: How can we get more students to think and to think longer?
Over the next 15 years, he set a research course to break every institutional norm possible to see what shifts could get students thinking. Out of this research grew 14 specific norm-busting teaching practices that have proven to enhance thinking—and thus learning in hundreds of thousands of classrooms around the world. And it doesn’t stop there. Not only do the 14 practices enhance thinking, they enhance other competencies in students such as collaboration, perseverance, risk-taking. Further, they enhance access and equity to learning and student autonomy and ownership of learning.
First published in 2020 as the book Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics, the BTC model has become a global phenomenon. Educators around the world—from the United States and Canada to Norway to Japan—are finding that when implementing these 14 practices—even if in incrementally over time—their students have become more engaged and more excited to learn mathematics.
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