help 3rd grader with math anxiety

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Anxiety often stems from being unprepared. Being unprepared in math usually stems from lack of understanding. I agree intervention can help her become proficient, but it will most likely never be her thing. Of course it starts early, because math builds upon itself. You really can't get to AP Calculus without fully grasping every other math course (except maybe Geometry) up to that point. There's nothing wrong with that, though. It may help to meet the child where they are rather than try to make her become some universal superstar.

I'm not really sure what this means... something not being a child's "thing". I don't want my child to be a math superstar. I want her to not have a panic attack when she is asked to subtract 17 from 36, though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe your daughter doesn't belong in the gifted and talented program for math. Those who excel at reading and writing rarely also excel at math. This becomes most apparent in third grade when division and fractions are introduced and the coursework gets harder. My DS was extremely good in everything until about third/fourth grade when his math grades slipped. He reads, writes, and understands languages extremely well, but math just isn't his thing. My DD is the opposite. You can do all the supplemental activities you want, which will help her to at least be proficient, but either it clicks or it doesn't.

Gifted and talented programs should split in the older grades, one track for math/science the other for reading/writing.

OP -- I totally disagree with the quoted PP. I'm the first responder (9:39). I actually thought DD needed to get out of adv. math and set up a conference with the adv. math teacher and DD's regular teacher b/c it was a nightmare at home during homework. They insisted that DD was properly place in adv. math (and "not a close case"). Frankly, I couldn't see how that could say that. But, what I know now (over a year later) is that I'm really glad that DD was put in adv. math and based on her experience, I think a lot more kids should be getting the "adv. math" program! Struggling is OK! Struggling is going to happen! The quoted PP is kind of like my DD in that they both have the same response to struggle --- quit! Americans have long had this idea that if something isn't easy right away, you "must not be good at it." I had the same belief all through college -- I didn't challenge myself b/c I just figured if I got a "B" in a class -- I must not be good at it. Bad mindset! Kids don't like to struggle -- but they need to learn to get comfortable with struggling (challenging themselves). That's the anxiety you are seeing. I feel your pain.

Part of DD's problem was that her younger brother (2 yrs. younger) could answer math questions in a second while she was still calculating it in her head (I'm talking about 7+3 or 11-5). He just gets math. DD would see that he answered it while she was still working it out in her head and then she'd say "he's good at it, and I'm not." That's what she internalized. That is wrong, wrong, wrong! Some people have to work harder to learn math. Some people have to work harder to write a paragraph. Some people have to work harder to lose 10 lbs. Does that mean we should just avoid activities that are hard for us? NO!. That means those are the things we need to do more of so that they become easier. And they will become easier (barring a learning disability). But, even if you have a learning disability (or metabolic problem in the case of losing weight)... that is still no reason to give up. Everyone still needs to understand math (or maintain a healthy weight).

Give your daughter a safe way to get mad (i.e. keep a pillow near the homework and let her punch it when she's frustrated). Teach her to use language like "this is challenging" or "I get frustrated when... " or "I'm still working on mastering multiplication" -- instead of statements like "I hate..." or "I'm not good at.." or "It's too hard." She has to learn that it's o.k. to be uncomfortable with a problem... but that won't get her out of learning math. Draw it out if you can. Let her draw it out. Use numberlines or measuring tapes. Keep at it - especially during the summer. IME, it gets better once they get over some of the memorization. If your relationship with DD is suffering then tell DD to put "I don't know how to do this" at the top of her homework so the teacher can see that she doesn't know it. Let DD take responsibility for learning and communicating with the teacher.

FWIW, I'm really grateful that the teachers didn't listen to my request to move DD out of adv. math. I'm seeing her develop a greater comfort with it this year. The lesson of determination and not giving up is far more valuable than learning 3 digit multiplication.

[Anonymous]

PP -- OP here, thank you for your advice. With my older child, he was very bad at writing in grades 3 and 4. His fourth grade teacher told me lots of boys hate to write, and writing just wasn't his "thing" (essentially) but it turned out he loves to write, just hates handwriting. Once he was able to turn thing in typewritten, his writing abilities took off.

So I'm thinking same thing with my daughter. She's very bright, but computation is hard for her, and for some reason sets off this panic response. So I guess we will just work on that. I think based on what I have been reading about panic/anxiety, the response can be short circuited by taking and holding a deep breath? I might teach her to be self aware when she feels stress about a problem coming on, to take and hold a breath and count to 10 before attempting it.

[Anonymous]

http://hpl.uchicago.edu/sites/hpl.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/Ramirez%20et%20al,%202013.pdf

In the present study, we examine whether math anxiety is present even earlier in elementary school, in first- and second-grade students. To our knowledge, this is the first study to explore whether math anxiety is present at such a young age. We believe that it is important to address math anxiety at the earliest possible ages because early math anxiety may ‘‘snowball’’ in ways that lead to increased anxiety, dislike, and avoidance of math

This literature has revealed that math anxiety may negatively impact math performance by co-opting the limited working memory (WM) resources that are crucial for successful math problem solving, which we refer to as ‘‘WM disruption’’

It is also possible that math anxiety-induced disruption of WM leads high-WM children to switch their problem-solving strategies as a means of circumventing the burden of math anxiety on WM. Indeed, past work with adults (Beilock & DeCaro, 2007) and children (Barrouillet & Le ?pine, 2005) suggests that factors that constrain WM (e.g., anxiety during math tests, operand size) lead students to switch to less WM-demanding, less successful problem-solving approaches.

[Anonymous]

Math anxiety: who has it, why it develops, and how to guard against it
Erin A. Maloney and Sian L. Beilock

Alleviating math anxiety

Understanding the antecedents of math anxiety provides clues about how to prevent its occurrence. For instance, bolstering basic numerical and spatial processing skills may help to reduce the likelihood of developing math anxiety. If deficiencies in basic mathematical competencies predispose students to becoming math anxious, then early identification of at-risk students (coupled with targeted exercises designed to boost their basic mathematical com- petencies and regulate their potential anxieties) may help to prevent children from developing math anxiety in the first place.

Knowledge about the onset of math anxiety also sheds light on how to weaken the link between math anxiety and poor math performance in those who are already math anxious. If exposure to negative math attitudes increases the likelihood of developing math anxiety, which in turn adversely impacts math learning and performance, then regulation of the negativity associated with math situations may increase math success, even for those individuals who are chronically math anxious. Support for this idea comes from work showing that when simply anticipating an upcoming math task, math anxious individuals who show activation in a frontoparietal network known to be involved in the control of negative emotions perform nearly as well as their non-anxious counterparts on a difficult math test [11]. These neural findings suggest that strategies that emphasize the regulation and control of negative emotions – even before a math task begins – may enhance the math performance of highly math anxious individuals.

One means by which people can regulate their negative emotions is expressive writing in which people are asked to write freely about their emotions for 10–15 min with respect to a specific situation (e.g. an upcoming math exam). Writing is thought to alleviate the burden that negative thoughts place on working memory by affording people an opportunity to re-evaluate the stressful experience in a manner that reduces the necessity to worry altogether. Demonstrating the benefits of expressive writing, Ramirez and Beilock showed that having highly test anxious high school students write about their worries prior to an upcoming final exam boosted their scores from B– to B+ (even after taking into account grades across the school year) [12]. Similar effects have been found specifically for math anxiety. Writing about math-related worries boosts the math test scores of math anxious students [13].

Negative thoughts and worries can also be curtailed by reappraisal or re-framing techniques. Simply telling students that physiological responses often associated with anxious reactions (e.g. sweaty palms, rapid heartbeat) are beneficial for thinking and reasoning can improve test performance in stressful situations [14]. Having students think positively about a testing situation can also help them to reinterpret their arousal as advantageous rather than debilitating. For example, when students view a math test as a challenge rather than a threat, the stronger their physiological response to the testing situation (measured here in terms of salivary cortisol), the better, not worse, is their performance [15].

Summing up

Education, psychology, and neuroscience researchers have begun to uncover the antecedents of math anxiety. Not only is math anxiety present at the beginning of formal schooling, which is much younger than was previously assumed, but its development is also probably tied to both social factors (e.g. a teacher’s anxiety about her own math ability) and a student’s own basic numerical and spatial competencies – where deficiencies may predispose students to pick up on negative environmental cues about math. Perhaps most striking, many of the techniques employed to reduce or eliminate the link between math anxiety and poor math performance involve addressing the anxiety rather than training math itself. When anxiety is regulated or reframed, students often see a marked increase in their math performance. These findings underscore the important role that affective factors play in situations that require mathematical reasoning.

Unfortunately, it is still quite rare that numerical cognition research takes into account issues of math anxiety when studying numerical and mathematical processing. By ignoring the powerful role that anxiety plays in mathematical situations, we are overlooking an important piece of the equation in terms of understanding how people learn and perform mathematics.

[Anonymous]

19:19 here.

What great articles!

And 12:18, I find your experience very insightful. Thank you for sharing.

[Anonymous]

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/10/the-myth-of-im-bad-at-math/280914/

[Anonymous]

Try playing card games that require her to add (ex Pyramid). Play games with her to build confidence. Confidence sounds like her problem. Start EASY.