Anxiety has been proven to shut down the frontal cortex of the brain, this means that in a math classroom if students are stressed they're less likely to succeed in understanding the content.
This isn't their fault
There's a lot that contributes to math anxiety from the physical space of the classroom, student-teacher communication and the type of assessments that are given.
Assessment
Math is traditionally taught to be a right or wrong answer and the small mistakes can make or break students scoring, this type of assessment is how teachers check for understanding, but is that really what they're assessing?
Often the final answer students conjure in math has nothing to do with their actual understanding of the concepts, this is why some students who can harness the ideas of math really well often get so discouraged because of little mistakes. Those mistakes are important to realize and learn but this can cause a lot of anxiety for students who feel like their score is a direct reflection of their personal understanding. One of the ways a teacher can avoid this it to make sure their form of assessments give way for students to show their understanding not only through numbers but writing, pictures, stories and other forms that students express their knowledge. A way to do this is by letting students have many different outlets to express what they know. For instance, at the beginning of a test leave a page blank and prompt students to share their understanding of the subject through whatever means they chose.
Physical Space
Physical space has a huge effect on students in a classroom. Just the other day I heard of an 8th grade girl who said she didn't think math would go well. When asked why and her response was that the walls were bare. She couldn't focus and didn't feel comfortable because of the walls. I thought this was so powerful because as teachers there's so much that goes into planning and classroom management but something as simple as walls could drive a student away from the subject all together. Cultivating an environment that's calm and fosters learning is a huge part of creating an anxiety free math classroom. Below are elements of a calming classroom design.
creating a calm space with warm lighting using lamps
giving many different options for seating, this can be seen with stand up desks, exercise balls as seats, cushioned seats, etc.
having real world math examples hung around the classroom to connect the abstractness of math to the real world, use fibonacci sequence to show composition in pictures and give aesthetic to the classroom
having outlets for students when they feel overwhelmed like stress-relieving color books that connect with math
Communication
using growth mindset language
setting expectation that generate respect and compassion
avoiding accusatory behaviors
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