Hasti Public School & Junior College, DONDAICHA
Blog Number*160
Our Hasti school is celebrating this year as a *maths year The intention is to make subject interesting for learners ,to eliminate the maths phobia and to reduce the anxiety*.
As a first step Our Hasti school has inducted *Maths joke of the day ,making of learning aid like *Maths clocks , Ganitachi Palkhi , Ganitiya Ganpati, riddle , question of the day, Mental mathematics, maths project etc. which will be a yearlong project. We intend to make our children maths friendly and well acquainted with the subject mathematics .
However children & parents as well are see to have tremendous anxiety about the subject .
in this blog making attempts to learn and think about what , where ,why and how of maths anxiety
Math anxiety or fear of math is actually quite common.
Math anxiety, like test anxiety is quite similar to stage fright. Why does someone suffer stage fright? Fear of something going wrong in front of a crowd? Fear of forgetting the lines? Fear of being judged poorly? Fear of going completely blank?
Math anxiety conjures up fear of some type. The fear that one won’t be able to do the math or the fear that it’s too hard or the fear of failure which often stems from having a lack of confidence. For the most part, math anxiety is the fear about doing the math right, our minds draw a blank and we think we’ll fail and of course the more frustrated and anxious our minds become, the greater the chance for drawing blanks. Added pressure of having time limits on math tests and exams also cause the levels of anxiety grow for many students.
Where Does Math Anxiety Come From?
Usually math anxiety stems from unpleasant experiences in mathematics. Typically math phobics have had math presented in such a fashion that it led to limited understanding.
Unfortunately, math anxiety is often due to poor teaching and poor experiences in math which typically leads to math anxiety*. Many of the students I’ve encountered with math anxiety have demonstrated an *over reliance on procedures in math as opposed to actually understanding the math.
When one tries to memorize procedures, rules and routines without much understanding, the math is quickly forgotten and panic soon sets in. Think about your experiences with one concept — the division of fractions. You probably learned about reciprocals and inverses. In other words, ‘It’s not yours to reason why, just invert and multiply’. Well, you memorized the rule and it works. Why does it work? Do you really understand why it works ? Did anyone ever use pizzas or math manipulatives to show you why it works* ? If not, you simply memorized the procedure and that was that. Think of math as memorizing all the procedures – what if you forget a few? Therefore, with this type of strategy, a good memory will help, but, what if you dont’ have a good memory. Understanding the math is critical. Once students realize they can do the math, the whole notion of math anxiety can be overcome. Teachers and parents have an important role to ensure students understand the math being presented to them.
Myths and Misconceptions
None of the following is true !
• You’re born with a math gene, either you get it or you don’t.
• Math is for males, females never get math!
• It’s hopeless, and much too hard for average people.
• If the logical side of your brain isn’t your strength, you’ll never do well in math.
• Math is a cultural thing, my culture never got it !
• There’s only one right way to do math.
Overcoming Math Anxiety
1. A positive attitude will help. However, positive attitudes come with quality teaching for understanding which often isn’t the case with many traditional approaches to teaching mathematics.
2. Ask questions, be determined to ‘understand the math’. Don’t settle for anything less during instruction. Ask for clear illustrations and or demonstrations or simulations.
3. Practice regularly, especially when you’re having difficulty. Take good notes or use journals effectively.
4. When total understanding escapes you, hire a tutor or work with peers that understand the math. You can do the math, sometimes it just take a different approach for you to understand some of the concepts.
5. Don’t just read over your notes – do the math. Practice the math and make sure you can honestly state that you understand what you are doing.
6. Be persistent and don’t over emphasize the fact that we all make mistakes. Remember, some of the most powerful learning stems from making a mistake. Learn from mistakes.
Find out more about the myths of doing math and you too will overcome math anxiety. And, if you think making mistakes is a bad thing, look again. Sometimes the most powerful learning stems from making mistakes. Find out how to learn from your mistakes.
what the 3 most common errors in math and remedies
When you are learning a new skill, do you do it perfectly the very first time? Do you know all the answers before you even begin? Of course not! The same is true of math. Learning math requires practice, and making mistakes is part of the process. making mistakes in math is a good thing, and can help kids learn and understand more deeply.
3 Types of Math Errors:
As I’ve thought about the different mistakes students of all ages make as they solve math problems, I’ve narrowed them down to 3 categories:
• Careless Errors
• Computational Errors
• Conceptual Errors
Careless Errors:
Careless errors occur simply because they are not paying attention, or are working too fast. Some examples might be:
• Copying the problem wrong to begin with
• Writing a wrong number
• Dropping a negative sign
• Sloppy handwriting
• Not following the directions
• Typing it wrong into their calculator
Computational Errors:
The second type of mistake is computational. This means somewhere in the process they incorrectly added, subtracted, multiplied or divided.
Making one computational mistake in a multi-step problem means the rest of their work will be wrong and the final solution wrong.
As a classroom teacher, always ask students to show all their steps
Conceptual Errors:
Conceptual errors occur because kids have misunderstood the underlying concepts or have used incorrect logic. This is the most difficult type of error to identify at first glance. This is also the most difficult type of error for students to recognize, but it is the most important to catch and correct.
When students make conceptual errors, it’s possible that all the math computations are correct. If they’ve misunderstood a concept and thus used an incorrect method to solve, they can work out each step meticulously and correctly but still get the wrong answer.
example:
When learning how to calculate surface area and volume of 3D shapes, students are often given a list of formulas without any explanation of the formulas. So when given the following problem,
Find the total volume of a rectangular prism with base side lengths of 6 inches and whose height is 8 inches.
Knowing the formula is V=Bxh, students will often solve this by simply multiplying 6×8. Even if they multiply correctly, this shows that they do not understand what volume is measuring, or that they have to find the area of the base.
be confident , understnd the concept than to memorise and learn from mistakes these three will help you in overcoming your anxiety…
academic world .wordpress.com 