Nowadays, many students may have
developed Mathematics anxiety; some are more severe than the others. As the
name suggested, it is an anxiety about one’s ability to do Mathematics. If
teachers don’t encourage students to keep trying, and convey the message that
making mistake is an essential part of learning, students may easily develop
anxiety in Math. When students reach the higher level Math classes such as
Pre-Calculus or Calculus, they may not realize that grasping the concept
require more efforts and time than before, and feel frustrated or discouraged
when they don’t get it right away. As a result, I believe that teachers shall
try to come up with ways to prevent their students from developing the anxiety,
and technology may serve the purpose. Students in the 21th century tend to
prefer reading an eBook over an actual book. Therefore, they will definitely
want to learn Math even more if they can both play and learn at the same time. There
are many educational apps out there that teachers may suggest to students such
as Sudoku, Luminosity and the Math Workout. These games are fun to play, but
also challenging as well. Most of them require mathematical thinking, and use
of logic. Many of them are even free, so why don’t we bring that into our
classroom and suggest them to our students? There may be some down time in the
classroom, and teachers should just let students to play games like Luminosity
rather than making them watch some random videos. This helps teachers to convey
the message that learning Math is not hard or boring to students. By doing so, students
may regain their confidence, or even develop interests in the subject. Overcoming
the anxiety is easy if we can shift gear a little bit, and let students realize
that Math isn’t something that hard to understand and useless by integrating
educational apps into our lessons. Start off a Monday morning lesson with a
Sudoku may not be a bad idea. Students will definitely want to learn it if they
see that it is fun, and interactive.
I agree, and there are a lot of ways to use technology in math class and about math anxiety, because I knew couple of my friends who had math anxiety, even myself. I also agree that teachers should use positive reinforcement to students. I really like your idea about your "monday morning lesson with a sudoku" that's not a bad idea. I don't think.
ReplyDeleteI am one of those students who suffer from math anxiety. I was very good in algebra, but when geometry came around I suffered. Geometry made me anxious about every other math subject that my high school had to offer and I found myself taking shelter in the liberal arts. For some of the students I have observed Youtube has been a saving grace. I interviewed a student about Youtube in the math classroom and he explained that he uses Youtube because he is afraid to ask questions in class. When he asks questions he feels anxious and believes that other students become upset when he asks questions.
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