SMART program targets math anxiety
Math trouble can eat away at a kid inside.
It can harm their confidence. And lead to strong emotions, anger and behaviour problems.
“A lot of times, kids don’t know they’re feeling anxious,” says Stephanie McCorriston, math co-ordinator at the Learning Disabilities Association of Niagara Region.
“They feel overwhelmed. It’s such a big feeling for them, they don’t know how to process it.”
Eventually, they may give up with a self-defeating thought: “I’ll never be good at anything.”
A new program offered by the association is hoping to change that downward path.
Beginning in May, it will offer an eight-week math program called SMART — Supporting Math Anxiety and Resilience Together — for children in grades 2 and 3, the time when equations and word problems are introduced at school and children begin to struggle.
In one-hour sessions offered twice a week, children will rotate through a series of activity stations, gathering together at the end of each night to address math anxiety.
“If you’re in a class where you consistently fail at something, you compare yourself to your peers,” McCorriston says. “You see yourself as not as good as your peers in general.”
As a collective, they talk about ways of coping and staying calm when they feel nervous in class.
They might discuss belly breathing and practise placing their hands on their stomach so they can feel themselves taking deep breaths.
“When we are stressed, we take shallow breaths. Less oxygen leads to poor decisions,” McCorriston says.
They will also try to reverse negative thoughts about math. “And make them believe they can succeed,” she says.
The kids might share a time when they faced a challenge and overcame it.
And they will work as a team to solve a math question, then talk about the strategies.
“Working as a team helps them understand they’re not alone in their struggles.”
Children do not need a learning disability diagnosis. However, the instructors are all trained in teaching children with learning disabilities, she says.
The program will begin at two sites, in St. Catharines and Niagara Falls, with five adults (two teachers and three volunteers) and a maximum of 10 children per location.
Teachers can work one-on-one with children, to focus on specific needs. In general, the math activities will include: Number sense — things like counting and understanding math symbols. Math fluency — the ability to automatically and accurately memorize basic math equations. And Math applications — daily ways to use math, like telling time, measuring and counting money.
Math often breeds anxiety because every question has just one right answer.
“Either you get that check mark, or you get that X,” McCorriston says.
It’s either correct. Or wrong. With little room for success in between.
“The kids get frustrated by failure,” she says.