Worry No More Because Taking The Fear Out Of Math

Fear of math subject! Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

According to research statistics, about 50 percent of students are affected by math subject anxiety. This anxiety has hounded generations for the longest time. Ever wondered why, and what can we do to get rid of it?

Most fear of math is passed on to students by either parents or teachers who are themselves anxious of the subject. This is done either verbally or non verbally. When children hear elders sharing their anxiety, they get conditioned to have math phobia themselves.

Math subject is taught typically as a right or wrong subject. This rigidity that gets conveyed in the form of “only one correct answer” to a math problem also adds to this fear and leads to students falling on traditional learning methods and takes away from the student any opportunity to indulge in inquiry and hence deeper learning.

Timed tests, or even the notion that you are smarter if you are quicker at solving a math problem put children on a quest to calculate quickly rather than indulging in deep understanding. This leads to the vicious cycle that most students with math anxiety run in - where they avoid math subject because they lack deep understanding of concepts and they do not understand concepts deeply enough because they avoid them.

To break this cycle, and to eradicate the math phobia, the role of educators is quintessentially important. Power Math is one such program designed and developed by the Podar Innovation Centre to ensure that the learning of Mathematics in Podar International Schools is an experience that all students enjoy, instead of fearing it.

The Power Math Kit comprises especially designed manipulatives and vivid worksheets in the Activity Book. The three stage program approaches deep learning of mathematical concepts by introducing the concept in concrete form with the use of manipulatives that every student in the class has access to. Concepts are understood with concrete examples and then taken to pictorial representations in the worksheets. It is only when the students attain a certain level of understanding and expertise in the concept are they moved to solving mathematical problems that are abstract in nature.

To give your child a chance to get rid of their fear of math, click here.