Five Top Tips to Take out the Fear of Maths

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Welcome To
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5 Top Tips to Take out the Fear of Maths
The fear of maths is common. The good news is
that fear is a learned behaviour you can easily
overcome.
Here Some Quality Thoughts are provided by
thecommunityschools to reduce the Fear in
Learning Maths
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Face the FearTalk about the fear and why it is
frightening. Write it down and say exactly which
bits are scary. The difficult maths problems
can usually be broken down into easier parts.
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Make Maths an Everyday Fun Part of LifeWhatever
the age of your child, and it is best to start
early, you can involve them with maths doing
everyday things. Cut foods like pizza or
sandwiches into fractions, count small foods like
sweets or grapes and make up subtraction sums I
have 10, if I give you six, how many will be left
for me? For older children, get them to work out
the best mobile phone plan, or some statistics
for their favourite sport. YouTube has over 400
results for multiplication rap making learning
tables fun.
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 Celebrate Success and Learn From Mistakes It is
important that you, as a parent, help your child
by staying calm when attempting a maths task. If
you get flustered and say I was never very good
at maths your child will learn to get flustered
and panic too. Just treat maths questions like a
puzzle, stay persistent and logical whilst
remaining confident and having fun. If your
child makes a mistake, it is better to ask how
did you get that answer? than say thats
wrong. Mistakes are not bad they are an
opportunity to learn. If you try a question and
get it wrong yourself, remain confident and say
its fun working through the challenge. Most of
us love a puzzle and feel elated when we get a
solution. Maths is fun.
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Practice (and patience) Makes PerfectMaths is
just like sport, the more you practise the better
you get, and, the more fun you have. There is no
need to worry about using a different method than
that used in school. There is never just one way
to solve a problem building mathematical
resilience is enabling children to tackle
problems with confidence and understanding not
through learnt techniques.
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We are All DifferentEach person is an individual
and learns differently. When it comes to maths
much of the school maths curriculum is actually
language-based. If your child is struggling with
maths, take the time to find out if the problem
is an ability to express their understanding
verbally. Chances are if your child can manage a
sheet of problems but freezes when faced with
lengthy descriptions of the same concepts, the
issue may be their learning style or language
ability.
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Practise lots, be confident and have fun.
Claire Meadows-Smith Head of Maths, St Albans RC
High School Ipswich and Founder of The Community
Maths School