Student Learning Math Anxiety

Math Anxiety

Most students have a challenge learning Math, and this depends on the strategies that the teacher uses. Assessment is joint in teaching the subject (Kostos & Shin, 2010). It refers to the settings and tasks that give the students opportunities to demonstrate the skills, understanding, and application of content within a context allowing for continued growth and learning.

Several types of assessments are used to evaluate the development and student learning. For instance, the teacher can use self-evaluation, peer and teacher tools like rubrics, and checklists when teaching Math (Moon, 2019). Student journals are also standard. They are examples of assessments that Math teachers can use to examine the affective and cognitive domains as the students learn.

Journal in Maths is a tool to help make communications between the teacher and students easy throughout the learning process and for the progress to be evaluated. Selling the idea of journaling can be done in specific ways. The first is by creating a good relationship with the students and introducing journaling slowly (Kostos & Shin, 2010). The teacher can also be consistent by regularly checking journals to help the students become more comfortable with the practice. He should also give the students direction by making them understand what it entails and what he expects of them.

In addition, some students may ridicule the practice, and others may not buy the idea. They may dislike it due to the impromptu explanations made in front of the entire class. Sharing solutions with other students could make the students like the assessment method better, and it will seem less intimidating for them.

The teacher can be innovative in practice and encourage the students to evaluate their strategies in discussing a Math topic and solving something. They can also make the Math language more interesting by making it clear and accessible as they communicate their ideas. Journaling is faced with some challenges when it comes to implementing them. The first is lack of time. They need a teacher’s involvement, and at times, they may overlook the mistakes and not avoid them before they become worse (Moon, 2019).

The other challenge is related to the structure of the program. Math journaling has a rigid structure that requires fast cooperation from both the teachers and students, and this means that they will spend a lot of time (Tippett, n.d). The primary way of dealing with these challenges is planning. A plan for creating the journals can be done to ensure the process of adapting it is done accurately and in the right way.

Tracking and monitoring can be done in this practice to reduce anxiety and improve student performance. It can be done by ensuring that each entry is created to clarify and organize the thinking process to decipher the mathematical situations (Kostos & Shin, 2010). The teachers can help the students connect different mathematical ideas and see and use several strategies.

They must work with the students to monitor and reflect on the processes of creating journals and understand how to use different modes of presentations. The tracking and monitoring also cerates confidence among the students since the students can reference the earlier work in the journals (Tippett, n.d). The other way is by being consistent.