A fifth-grade teacher shares how “thinking classroom” routines—whiteboards, collaboration, and problem strings—shift math from fear to confidence and reasoning.
Math anxiety doesn’t always disappear because students “need practice”—sometimes it fades when the classroom changes how thinking happens.
That shift is at the heart of a fifth-grade math approach shared by educator Kathleen Palmieri. who has been reworking her routine around the idea that learning isn’t about absorbing answers.. Instead. the classroom becomes a place where students mobilize what they already know. test ideas with peers. and build understanding through conversation.
Her starting point is personal.. As a student, she struggled with math and spent years doubting her ability.. In college, she discovered something that would later shape her teaching: the joy of exploring numbers and solving problems together.. Now. her goal is straightforward—send her students into the next grade with confidence. collaboration. and strategies they can reuse. not just a stack of worksheets they completed.
Palmer’s classroom study this year centers on Peter Liljedahl’s “Building Thinking Classrooms. ” which argues that the “smartest person in the room” isn’t an individual student or teacher—it’s the room itself.. In her view, the practical takeaway is powerful: students should be treated as mathematicians, not as performers copying methods.. That framing also connects with earlier work that emphasizes students as “makers of mathematics. ” responsible for constructing meaning rather than mimicking procedures.
To turn those ideas into daily practice, she restructured the physical and social setup of math work.. One of her most visible changes is the use of large. non-permanent vertical surfaces—whiteboards placed in her room to support group thinking.. Instead of students sitting through problem-solving, they stand and collaborate as they write, discuss, and iterate.. Even small design choices can lower intimidation; dry-erase markers feel less permanent than pencils. and standing changes the energy of the task.
She also uses a simple visual system during group work: each student receives a differently colored marker and writes their name on the board.. The colors do more than decorate.. They help her see who is participating in the reasoning process. and they reinforce that collaboration is shared work. not something one student “drives.” Groups are randomly formed as well. a detail that reflects her belief that all students are capable and that math identity shouldn’t depend on who sits next to whom.
Once the groups begin, the teacher’s role shifts toward prompting, listening, and guiding without taking over.. Students start with an initial task written at the top of their board. and she leans on “thinking tasks” that invite discussion about strategies and how to solve.. When she walks around. she listens in—and when students ask. “Is this right?”. she responds by affirming collaboration and offering hints.. Her intention isn’t just to nudge toward an answer; it’s to reinforce the message that she expects them to reason their way through.
A particularly telling routine comes into play when one group lands on the correct reasoning while another group’s work doesn’t yet fully hold.. Rather than privately correcting, she brings the groups together to share their boards.. The classroom becomes a live forum where explanations are compared and students learn by contrast.. That matters because it treats mistakes as part of thinking, not as evidence that someone can’t do math.
She also integrates “problem strings,” a structured sequence of related problems designed to help students construct relationships across steps.. In her description. the point of a string isn’t to “answer everything” quickly—it’s to discover a strategy in one problem and carry that thinking into harder ones.. She gives a concrete example of dividing by using scaling: students learn how a quotient changes when the dividend is multiplied. and they move from an initial computation toward increasingly complex versions using the same reasoning.. As students progress, they draw tables and make connections between representations and number patterns.
The real shift, though, is cultural.. Students aren’t only computing; they notice, organize their thinking, and talk through what they see in the numbers.. That is where the “thinking classroom” approach becomes more than a set of techniques.. It changes what students believe learning is: not a one-time event where the teacher supplies the method. but an ongoing practice where they carry ideas forward.
For schools looking at curriculum and classroom practice. this model offers a useful lesson: engagement may depend less on “more content” and more on how students are positioned to reason together.. Standing whiteboards, visible participation signals, group reshuffling, and problem strings are concrete tools—but they serve a larger purpose.. They help teachers make thinking observable and help students experience themselves as contributors to mathematical meaning.
Palmeri ends with a hopeful message that resonates far beyond one classroom: opportunities to learn. and the messages students receive about their potential. often matter more than innate ability.. When the classroom is built to mobilize student knowledge—rather than to test it—math time can start to feel like a space where students want to return.
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