She was sweating.” Let’s jump in twos on this number line.
Start with two and keep on adding two.” I told Zehra, who was looking at me
with wondering eyes. “Keep your two fingers open in front of you if you need to
add.” I stretched her right hand in front of her. She kept pulling her shirt
down from the side.” It’s a game” I assured her (maybe she was thinking I am
taking some sort of a test).
“Ok! Let’s start, two….” There was no answer from her.”
“Add two in two, what’s two plus two?”
“Five”, she finally said.
“See these two beads”, I pointed at the beads on the table,
we had just practiced making groups of two.
“It's four”, she looked at them and counted while moving her
head at every count.
“There you go, you got it. Now let’s continue”
“Two, Four …..”
No answer. Hmm, ok, let’s color these shapes. See some
shapes here”, I took a sheet of paper with a star, a circle, a rectangle, a
pentagon, and a square. “Which one is square, can you guess, can you color a square.”
She nodded and happily
picked a crayon.
“Why can’t she tell two plus two is four”, Mona, 9 yo girl whispered
loud enough and Zehra raised her eyes a bit.
“I couldn’t add when I was seven, it happens, maybe it
happened with you too when you were seven but now you can now add quickly and so
will she when she’s nine.” I couldn’t think of a simpler reply.
We were having a math review session with two girls, seven
and nine. They were doing their work according to their class level. Zehra was joining
class two in a month and Mona class four. Whenever I asked a math sum with
an “audience” present, Mona’s anxiety symptoms were visible, when she was alone;
she was the most confident, happy, and attentive child.
“She doesn’t hate math”.
“What? She doesn’t?”
“No!”
Zehra’s mother was
surprised, she had earlier told me her daughter simply hates math and loved
only reading. And I told her good readers are also good at math. Math is a collection
of words just like a language; if they can make sense of one language so can
they make sense of math, which is also a language of symbols having some
meaning.
“But she doesn’t want to do the math.”
“So don’t do math, don’t make it a burden, a dreaded task,
she actually enjoys math if done alone.”
“How can someone do math alone?”
And that’s the main point I want to emphasize in this
article. Why not? Part of the problem in children who hate math is that they
are afraid of making mistakes and the current setup of our classrooms seems
not to accept it or at least their classmates don’t.
 |
| Group work in a math class |
In a math class kids who prefer to work independently and
alone (introverts) are facing constant pressure from their peers who are racing
to reach a solution and deliver it out loud, and by doing so making the introverts
friends nervous and lose their concentration.
The solution seems simple.
Combine group and independent task in a math classroom so
both categories of students get their chance of participating and actually
enjoying math in class.
Tell me your story of math anxiety, comment below to let me know what you think of this article.
