8 Strategies to Overcome Math Anxiety in the Classroom

 

Have you ever considered what math anxiety may look like in your classroom?

As I prepare to begin my lesson, handing out notebooks or math prompts, I look around and observe my students. As the lesson progresses, I continue to look around and monitor their behaviour. Are there some students who take time to settle down or start to talk about  things completely unrelated to math? Does one student ask to go the washroom? Or maybe complain about a stomachache or a headache? Is there a student who may start crying or become angry and indulge in negative self talk? "I am dumb." or "I can never get this right!" and so on and so forth. The more subtle symptoms : Is a student being being extra chatty, taking time to settle down, obsessing about the answer, refusing to answer questions, seldom asking for help, hurtling through work or showing a reluctance to work with others. 

A broad categories these symptoms would look like this:

• cognitive difficulties
• emotional distress
• physiological symptoms
• avoidance behaviour.

So, what does one do when we have students like this in the classroom? How do we reduce their anxiety?

Anxiety stems from fear. Fear of being powerless, being ridiculed, appearing dumb, making mistakes, not meeting expectations. What a burden on a child!

The Teacher

As a teacher,  certain aspects of your students' life outside the classroom will always remain a mystery. A way to address this lurking monster in the classroom is to first look inward. Am I an anxious math teacher? Do I get upset if a student takes too long to understand a concept? Do I have a good understanding of the curricular expectations? Do I have a neat bundle of tools and strategies under my belt that I can whip out when the need arises? What biases do I have when I consider the topic of math? students? parents? How much classroom control do I need to have?

The Compassionate Teacher

My goal in a math classroom is to create curious and courageous students who enjoy math. How then should I tackle anxiety that is coming in the way of my goal?

Strategy 1: Celebrate mistakes. 

Remove fear. Mistakes are often viewed as a negative thing in society and somehow this may have seeped into the psyche of our students. In my classroom, we know that mistakes are a part of learning and in fact are a welcome opportunity to grow our understanding of a concept. Students will not buy into this at the beginning! You have to really mean it. If a student makes a mistake and you hear a few giggles at the back of the classroom, as a teacher, you need to address this infraction immediately.

Strategy 2: Honor effort over ability.

Do you have students who are excited about math only when they get all the answers correct? The moment it becomes somewhat challenging, they retreat, paralyzed. Is there any student who continues to persevere? If one way didn't work, she tries another way. Does your teaching during direct instruction reflect this?

Strategy 3: Encourage collaboration

While a math class is in session, you may have a student following you around the class. "Is this correct?" "Can you check the first step?" And no matter how many times you ask them to be seated, there are up and in front of you, there notebook thrust in your face. Collaboration allows students to deal with anxiety by having other students by their side While they are in the learning pit, they hold each others' hands as they climb the ladder of challenge. The power slowly moves from teacher (know-all) to the students. The joy students experience when successful is palpable.

Strategy 4- Student-led math classroom

There comes a time during the teaching of a concept, when students are ready to take on more responsibility. Preceding this phase, one needs to have time for direct instruction along with worked examples. Once students are ready for a challenge, I would select a word problem that is not too easy and not too hard (ZPD) and asks students to take over. Looking for a juicy problem from a text book or resource, modifying it to suit the students' environment, replacing names with their names, makes the problem more relevant and authentic.

Strategy 5- Multiple perspectives 

As students work in groups, they come to the whiteboard to explain their thinking; they debate; they share different strategies/perspectives. Student voice is a great way to meet anxiety head-on. They know that their way of solving a problem may look very different from another student's. 

Strategy 6 - Gamify math. 

Compile a list of math tools and strategies to make learning fun! Here is one great example using 4 operations. Try it out with your students.

Source: Thinksquare

Here is another brilliant one:

Turtle Sums

Strategy 7

Empower students by showing them how to check their answers. This not only gives them agency but frees up a lot of teacher time. For instance, while teaching subtraction, show students HOW to check their answers, not forgetting to show them the WHY. Remember, we want to teach for conceptual understanding.

so 27 - 5= 22.

The students will check by adding 22 and 5 and can explain why they do this.

Strategy 8

This is a key strategy that will help you throughout the year! Build strong relationships with families of your students. 

• Regularly share moments of success
• Keep lines of communication open
• Share progress regularly
• Provide resources such a games or videos or online math tools
• Discuss concerns however small. 

These strategies have helped me deal with student and parent anxiety related to math.

Do you have any strategies not mentioned here? Please do share!