How do the words "math homework" make you feel? More importantly, how does it make your child feel? Some students can become anxious when asked to do math. They dread numbers and wish word problems would just go away. Some children avoid doing their math homework until the last minute or conveniently “forget” to do it. Sometimes these children have such negative reactions at the thought of doing math that they start to hate school altogether.
Does this sound familiar? It’s possible your child suffers from Math Anxiety.
WHAT CAUSES MATH ANXIETY?
Anxiety is generally caused by the fear of the future. Math Anxiety is centered on the fear of future failure. A child will have math anxiety if they have experienced repeated past failures, along with a negative reaction to those failures. After a certain amount of attempts and failures, a student becomes agitated and nervous when confronted with the possibility or the actuality of doing a math problem.
Often times this anxiety is caused by the assumption a student has that he or she is the only one incapable of doing math. They start to believe that something is wrong with them because they don’t know what everyone else knows. They believe they are bad at math and will never improve.
Student Learning Standards and Common Core are the bars that educators use to measure the performance of each student. If one child has a low performance, according to these measurements, they are dismayed. If the child repeatedly is scoring below the average or acceptable margins, they will begin to worry and feel anxious about math tests, even math in general.
It becomes especially harder on the child when he or she cannot remember all the arithmetic tricks and ways their teacher has shown them how to solve a problem. Too many teachers rely on different tricks and memorization to teach students math. This results in students being unable to remember every single trick and not being able to perform well in math. This then causes their math anxiety to return.
THE ABACUS KNOCKS OUT ANXIETY
There is a way to show a student how to understand what math is and how to work with any problem presented to them. The abacus can solve this anxiety and make your child master Math.
“Abacus math bridges the gap between the two hemispheres of the brain, allowing both creativity and logical thinking to flow producing a more exercised brain,” says Ms. Tiffany, a veteran abacus math teacher with Genie Academy. She has been teaching abacus math for 6 years and has been apart of the managing team for 4 years. She goes on to say that “the student develops a pictorial representation of the math through a hands-on approach. This helps the student to not only obtain a correct ‘answer’ but to understand the ‘why’ and ‘how’ - the reasoning behind the math”
The abacus is widely successful at defeating Math Anxiety for a number of reasons. First, it is a multi-sensory tool that engages many parts of the brain at once. Another reason is because it allows students to advance quickly in math. Also, the abacus is intuitive for students; they get how it works and get how math works.
An abacus student sees and feels how numbers change and interact. An abacus student can understand why the numbers behave the way they do. Numbers come off the page and become an interactive tool as the abacus student learns. Because of this, the abacus student is strengthening their understanding of what math is as well as building their confidence. As an abacus student learns the different patterns and manipulations of numbers, they become more secure in their knowledge of numbers and math in general.
The abacus is invaluable for every level of mathematics. Students who are taught the abacus young advance quickly and understand math concepts that are three or four years ahead of their grade. They can understand such advanced topic because of the logical and intuitive nature of the abacus. The systematic understanding of the abacus is the key to defeating math anxiety. It is simple, effective, and it works.
PROVEN SUCCESS WITH THE ABACUS
Charlie and Angela Maniscalso have been accepted into the NYC Gifted and Talented Program. The program is highly selective and only enrolls 0.76% of their applicants. When we asked Maire-Paul Maniscalso, mother of these two extraordinary children, what her secret was she answered “five minutes of mental [abacus] math at breakfast every morning.”
Jaisen Fraiser-Davis went from not being able to speak to skipping a grade because of Genie Academy. He has been admitted to North Star, the top charter school in Newark. Javit, Jaisen’s mother, credits Genie Academy for his amazing achievements, overall improvement in math and language art, and his incredible growth in self-confidence.
Before Esther started at Genie Academy, her Terra Nova results were in the 39th percentile. The Terra Nova is a set of standardized achievement test used nationwide. In only 7 months working with the abacus and Genie Academy, she jumped into the 91st percentile. 10 months later, she was placed in the 99th percentile in the country. Her mother, Lydia, said “It was unbelievable how fast the transformation was. Not only did she increase her scores by over 150% in under two years, her confidence grew just as much. She will tell you know that math is her favorite subject.”
There are so many more Success Stories because of the abacus and Genie Academy.
SUCCESS FOR EVERY CHILD!
As a parent, all you want if for your child to succeed. There are so many obstacles to that happening though. Sometimes it may seem that, in one area or another, success is simply not possible. As a parent whose child is experiencing math anxiety, you know how serious the issue can become. You have probably tried many different “fixes” and saw little or no progress. We are here to tell you that the abacus is the answer you have been searching for. Not only will teaching your child the abacus eliminate their math anxiety, it will help them in all areas of study. Your child’s confidence will skyrocket because now they understand math in a way they were not able to before and now they are excited to learn again!
Research
https://www2.southeastern.edu/Academics/Faculty/dshwalb/files/Shwalb_et_alADPAbacusBookChapter.pdf
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hide-and-seek/201608/is-anxiety-psychological-or-physical
