Math Autobiography Intervention for Math Anxiety

                                                           

There are some interventions that a school counselor can use to help a student who suffers from Math Anxiety. One of this intervention is the Math Autobiography. The Math Autobiography is a process which involve two steps. The first one is in which the school counselor helps the student to remember the success and failure  in math that the student had over the years. It is extremely important to point out the success that the student had so he can see that he is capable of succeeding in the subject and he has that success experience to prove it. The next step in the intervention is to help the student wonder about the attitude toward mathematics and other significant aspects in his environment. It has to involve parents, siblings, grandparents, friends, teachers and everyone that has an important presence in the student life. This attitudes has to include if someone the student knows have fear or feel pressure towards math. Also, if there had been comparisons between siblings ('You're brother is really good in math" or "You're sister never had any problems with math"). The school counselor has to pay attention to some statements made by teachers, specially if this teacher was a math teacher.
By using this intervention, the school counselor can help the student point out the root of his math anxiety. By doing this, the counselor can help and guide the student to see by himself that it was something external that cause the anxiety and that has nothing to do with his capacity of doing mathematics.
Hope you find this intervention useful.

Books about Math Anxiety

Here are some links to books about Math Anxiety. They are good resources for helping kids  deal with this anxiety.

• http://www.amazon.com/Overcoming-Math-Anxiety-Sheila-Tobias/dp/0393313077 - The new edition retains the author's pungent analysis of what makes math "hard" for otherwise successful people and how women, more than men, become victims of a gendered view of math. It has been substantially updated to incorporate new research on what we know and don't know about "sex differences" in brain organization and function, and it has been enlarged to include problems, puzzles, and strategies tried out in hundreds of math anxiety workshops Tobias and her colleagues have sponsored.
• http://www.amazon.com/Math-Attack-Joan-Horton/dp/B0046LUIO2 - Each time her teacher asks, “What’s seven times ten?” a young girl experiences a severe case of arithmetic strain. “Numbers flew out of my head by the score. They stuck to the ceiling; they bounced off the floor!” Soon, exploding numbers are taking over her classroom, her school – then the entire town!
  Ebullient verse and ingenious collage illustrations full of hilarious escalating antics make this kid-centric romp through the dreaded times tables a read-aloud gem. Clever endpapers feature a multiplication table.
• http://alpha2.suffolk.lib.ny.us/record=b2196434~S63 - When a teacher tells their class that they can think at almost everything as a math problem, one student acquires a math anxiety that becomes a curse.  

Math

Mathematics, as a field of study, has features that set it apart from almost any other scholastic discipline. On the one hand, correctly manipulating the notation to calculate solutions is a skill, and as with any skill mastery is achieved through practice. On the other hand, such skills are really only the surface of mathematics, for they are only marginally useful without an understanding of the concepts which underlie them. 
Consequently, the contemplation and comprehension of mathematical ideas must be our ultimate goal. Ideally, these two aspects of studying mathematics should be woven together at every point, complementing and enhancing one another, and in this respect studying mathematics is much more like studying, say, music or painting than it is like studying history or biology.
         In view of mathematics’ unique character, the successful student must devise a special set of strategies for accomplishing his or her goals, including strategies for lecture taking, homework, and exams. 

Taken from http://www.mathacademy.com/pr/minitext/anxiety/#strat

Math Anxiety Symptoms

Hi, everyone that suffers from Math Anxiety experience some symptoms. Some of this symptoms are physical and some are mental/emotional


Here are some physical symptoms for you to help identify

• nervousness;
• pounding heart;
• rapid breathing;
• sweating;
• nauseousness;
• upset stomach; and
• tenseness

Some mental/emotional symptoms

• a feeling of panic or fear;
• cloudy or fuzzy thinking;
• lack of concentration;
• a mental block in thinking; and
• feelings of helplessness, guilt, shame, inferiority, or stupidity.

Suggestions to help overcome math anxiety

Here are a few suggestions to help overcome math anxiety: Do math every day- You will need to work on your mathematics each day, if only for a half-hour. You must avoid doing all your math homework and studying on one or two days per week. Schedule quality study time throughout the week and stick to your schedule. Study smart- Try different study skills to do math. Ask your friends what study skills helps them in doing math.The more you try different approaches, the more you will discover what works for you. Attend class- You must attend class to keep up with the pace of the class. Attending to class will help you notice if you need help understanding something. And if you don't understand, ask your teacher right away! Get organized!- You need to keep good class notes. You need to keep a good math notebook with lists of vocabulary, properties, formulas, theorems and procedures.  Continually test yourself-  Be aware of what you know and of what you don't know. Keep practicing the concepts and problems presented in the classroom and in the textbook. Replace negative self-talk with positive self-talk- Having a negative attitude is an obstacle that does not need to prevent you from succeeding. Be mindful of what you are saying to yourself. Develop positive affirmations such as "I will succeed in this course!" or "I love math!" to counteract any negative feelings you may have about your abilities or about math itself. Ultiize all your resources. Use your textbook, friends, study groups, your instructor, the internet, all these are available to help you succeed. Only you can take advanage of them.          Most of all. BELIEVE in yourself!!!!

Can I measure Math Anxiety?

  If you have a problem with math anxiety, you might wonder about how your level of anxiety compares to other students across the country and around the world.  Several diagnostic tests have been designed to measure attitudes and levels of anxiety towards math.  One of the best known is the Mathematics Anxiety Rating Scale (MARS) by Richard M. Suinn of the Rocky Mountain Behavioral Science Institute at Fort Collins, Colorado.  This test can be obtained from your local counselor or by writing to the Institute at Fort Collins.  Data to indicate the scores of other students from a variety of majors and colleges can also be obtained to allow you to compare your own scores to those of other students.  Other diagnostic tests that measure math anxiety are also available.  

Anxiety hits high-achieving kids hardest

Anxiety hits high-achieving kids hardest (taken from Psych Central)

A study of first and second graders found that many high-achieving students experience math anxiety, with worry and fear undermining them so much that they can fall behind other students who don’t have that anxiety.

Researchers at the University of Chicago found that math anxiety was most detrimental to the highest-achieving students, who typically have the most working memory.

“You can think of working memory as a kind of ‘mental scratchpad’ that allows us to work with whatever information is temporarily flowing through consciousness,” said Dr. Sian Beilock, a professor in pyschology. “It’s especially important when we have to do a math problem and juggle numbers in our head. Working memory is one of the major building blocks of IQ.”

Worries about math can disrupt working memory. The research team found that a high degree of math anxiety undermined the performance of otherwise successful students, placing them almost half a school year behind their less anxious peers, in terms of math achievement.

For the study, the researchers tested 88 first-graders and 66 second-graders from a large urban school system. The students were tested to measure their academic abilities, their working memory and their fear of mathematics. They were asked, on a sliding scale, how nervous they felt to go to the front of the room and work on a mathematics problem on the board.

The study found that among the highest-achieving students, about half had medium-to-high math anxiety. Math anxiety was also common among low-achieving students, but it did not impact their performance. That may be because these students developed simpler ways of dealing with mathematics problems, such as counting on their fingers, according to the researchers.

“Early math anxiety may lead to a snowball effect that exerts an increasing cost on math achievement by changing students’ attitudes and motivational approaches towards math, increasing math avoidance, and ultimately reducing math competence,” Beilock said.

The researchers recommend some ways to alleviate math anxiety, noting that “when anxiety is regulated or reframed, students often see a marked increase in their math performance.”

One way to reframe anxiety is to have students write about their worries regarding math ahead of time. A procedure called “expressive writing” helps students to “download” worries and minimize anxiety’s effects on working memory, the researchers said.

For younger students, expressive picture drawing, rather than writing, may also help lessen the burden of math anxiety, the researchers add. Teachers can also help students reframe their approach by helping them to see exams as a challenge rather than as a threat, the researchers conclude.