Students get under pressure at the time of tests as they carry the expectation of teachers and parents to perform better in the test but since time tests have been implemented by educational institutions the pressure on students gets almost doubled as now they have to finish the test in a given time limit so they have to carefully write down the correct answer plus they have to race against the clock and complete the test before time.
Students can still manage to complete other subject exams within the time limit as the question which comes in the test is the exactly the same which are there are study books so they are better prepared for the questions but this gets totally changed at the time of Maths exams as the students have to focus on the formulas and steps in order to find the correct answer and they have to solve the test questions within a time limit which makes it hard for students to focus and follow the right steps as they don’t have the luxury to spend even 2 minutes on one questions which make students anxious and they underperform in tests.
Maths anxiety is real and it still exists it as there is no other subject in schools that people actually afraid of and tends to avoid it as earlier maths was simple in childhood but as they go into higher class maths started to gets harder and harder and it’s complex formula gets tough to understand and at the time of maths exams students used to pray in order to just gets the passing marks because not only they have to write a correct answer but also they have to complete the exam in time. Schools like schools in Dehradun implement the best test techniques into their curriculum to avoid anxiety during exams. Maths create a phobia in students which can become hereditary and can be passed to children which makes maths anxiety lives forever.
Time-Test has become popular and is widely used in almost every exams likes the entrance exams, school exams, colleges exams so this means this test-taking format is most unlikely to change so the only option left is to train the student in such a way that they can understand the formula and steps so clearly that they can easily find out the answer correctly and to by practising over and over again they can eventually speed up the process of finding the solution which helps students at the time of tests.
Tips for Teachers to prepare students for Time Test
- Teachers can use gamification of knowledge in order to liven up the practice sessions and the best way to make it work is when teachers don’t grade the students and let the students grade themselves as a study shows that students will tend to make healthier progress when they judge their own past performance and make improvements accordingly. This will boost students’ confidence and they will be more comfortable when they appear in real-time tests.
- Lots of teachers use non-competitive tactics in order to prepare students for time tests. In this tactics teachers gave the question to students and challenge them they can’t solve all the problems the only catch is that students have to solve one more question than they solved in the previous session by this technique students gradually able to solve more problems in given times
- Teachers can prepare students for time tests by using visioning exercises where students can visualize themselves answering questions correctly and getting successful. This will boost the students’ confidence and they feel they can finish the test successfully and on time.
Tips for reducing Maths anxiety
- Maths can be overwhelming as it includes step by step process with complex formulas so Teachers can help students making their maths experience as simple as possible teachers can use various digital tools to make them understand complex formulas and guide them in every single step this will leads students to have a better understanding of maths and their math anxiety level will eventually go down.
- Another way to reduce maths anxiety is where teachers make mixed ability groups of students and each group consist of higher to lower ability students by making this type of flexible group will make the bottom ability students engage with mathematics as they will be indifferent company so they started to learn more, will able understand the complex formulas and steps and this can eventually boost the confidence of students in maths.
- Teachers should motivate students to understand the complex problems of maths rather than memorised it by this students will focus more on understanding maths as a new language and will gradually able to start understanding its complexities and this will make students comfortable with maths and their phobia of maths will come to an end.